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1*505] 


LITERATURE    PRIMERS, 

Edited  by  J.  R.  GREEN,  M.A. 


PHILOLOGY. 


Edited  by  JOHN  RICHARD  GREEN. 


PHILOLOGY 


BY 


JOHN   PEILE,   M.A. 


NEW  YORK  •  :•  CINCINNATI  •:•  CHICAGO 

AMERICAN  BOOK  COMPANY. 

FROM   THE   PRESS   OF 

D.  APPLETON  &  COMPANY. 


CONTENTS. 


pw 


CHAPTER  I. 

THE  CONSTANT  CHANGE  IN   LANGUAGE 5 

CHAPTER  II. 

SOME     OF    THE    WAYS     IN     WHICH     LANGUAGES     HAVE 

BEEN   FORMED 43 

CHAPTER  III.  , 

THE    PRINCIPAL    LANGUAGES    OF    THE   AMALGAMATING 

TYPE 54 

CHAPTER  IV. 

HOW  OUR  WORDS  WERE  MADE •    .         68 

CHAPTER  V. 

HOW  WORDS  ARE  GOT  READY  FOR  USE 80 

CHAPTER  VI. 

THE  PARTS  OF  SPEECH 114 

CHAPTER  VII. 

THE  BEGINNINGS  OF  SYNTAX 124 

CHAPTER  VIII. 

ON   THE   NATURE  OF    LANGUAGE 132 

APPENDIX l62 


PRIMER 


* 

^ - '  _. 


OF 


PHILOLOGY. 

CHAPTP;R  i. 

THE   CONSTANT   CHANGE    IN   LANGUAGE. 

1.  What  is  Philology  ? 

It  is  the  science  which  teaches  us  what  language  is. 
The  philologist  deals  with  the  words  which  make  up 
a  language,  not  merely  to  learn  their  meaning,  but  to 
find  out  their  history.  He  pulls  them  to  pieces,  just 
as  a  botanist  dissects  flowers,  in  order  that  he  may 
discover  the  parts  of  which  each  word  is  composed 
and  the  relation  of  those  parts  to  each  other :  then 
he  takes  another  and  yet  another  language  and  deals 
with  each  in  the  same  way  :  then  by  comparing  the 
results  he  ascertains  what  is  common  to  these  different 
languages  and  what  is  peculiar  to  one  or  more  :  lastly, 
he  tries  to  find  out  what  the  causes  are  which  operate 
on  all  these  languages ,  in  order  that  he  may  under- 
stand that  unceasing  change  and  development  which 
we  may  call,  figuratively,  the  life  of  language. 

2.  But  you  will  say  perhaps,  'What  is  the  good 
of  all  this  ?     When  I  learn  a  language,  I  learn  it  in 
order  to  speak  it  or  to  read  it ;  I  don't  want  to  know 


6  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

how  the  words  are  made  up,  I  only  want  to  know 
what  they  mean/  It  is  quite  true  that  you  need  not 
learn  anything  more.  For  example,  if  you  are  learn- 
ing French,  you  must  learn  that  mats  means  'but;'  it 
is  not  necessary  for  you  to  know  that  mais  is  only  a 
shorter  form  of  the  Latin  tnagis ;  you  have  simply  to 
remember  that  it  is  now  a  conjunction.  But  it  may 
interest  you  to  know  that  it  was  once  a  comparative 
adjective,  and  meant  '  more ; '  and  that  some  people, 
when  they  wished  to  say  *  don't  be  in  a  hurry,  but 
listen,'  struck  out  the  idea  of  expressing  the  second 
clause  by  saying  *  more  listen,'  that  is,  '  listen  rather 
than  not.'  But  has  quite  a  different  history ;  it  meant 
'  be  out,'  that  is,  '  except ; '  so  the  English  and  the 
French  got  to  the  same  meaning  by  very  different 
roads.  Now,  as  I  have  said,  it  is  nowise  necessary  for 
you  to  know  things  like  these  :  you  can  say  what  you 
have  to  say  and  understand  what  you  hear  quite  well 
without  this  knowledge.  But  words  are  things  after 
all,  as  well  as  being  the  names  of  things ;  and  they 
often  are  very  powerful  things  too,  as  we  may  see  by 
and  by.  And,  if  you  are  one  of  those  who  like  to 
know  why  things  are  what  they  are,  you  will  be  glad 
to  find  out  that  words  are  not  merely  so  much  breath 
which  is  spent  in  setting  out  our  meaning  to  each 
other  and  has  no  further  permanence  ;  that,  on  the 
contrary,  they  are  abiding  things,  the  history  of  whose 
origin,  growth,  decay,  and  vanishing,  is  much  more 
interesting  than  many  a  novel ;  which  even  in  many 
a  curious  way  throws  light  on  some  dark  processes  of 
the  human  mind. 

3.  But,  you  will  ask,  '  Can  words  be  subject  to 
this  incessant  change  ? '  Substantives,  for  example, 
are  the  names  of  things  actually  existing,  or  of  quali- 
ties of  those  things.  When  I  say  an  oak,  I  mean  an 
oak  and  not  a  beech  ;  goodness  is  not  badness ;  and 
if  these  things  don't  change,  how  can  the  names  which 
express  them  change  without  causing  utter  confusion  ? 


I.]      THE  CONSTANT  CHANGE  IN  LANGUAGE.       7 

Perhaps  variations  so  violent  as  these  are  not  very 
common,  and  yet  both  these  changes  have  occurred 
in  language.  The  very  same  word  which  to  the 
Greeks  meant  an  oak,  to  the  Romans  meant  a  beech, 
though  an  oak  never  yet  changed  into  a  beech. 
Schlecht  in  German  first  of  all  meant  '  straight.1  Now 
the  '  straightness '  of  a  visible  object,  such  as  a  line,  is 
the  most  obvious  metaphor  by  which  to  express  the 
moral  idea  of  *  straightforwardness '  and  simplicity  of 
heart  and  purpose,  just  as  our  common  word  right 
means  originally  that  which  is  straight,  the  Latin  rectus. 
But  then  simpleness  may  shade  into  the  folly  of  the 
simpleton  ;  and  lastly  the  fool  in  worldly  wisdom  may 
give  his  name  to  the  fool  of  whom  Solomon  spoke ; 
and  by  some  such  process  as  this  schlecht  in  modern 
German  means  <  bad '  only.  After  seeing  this  change 
of  nouns,  can  we  wonder  that  verbs  can  vary  their 
meaning  by  imperceptible  degrees  so  much  that  the 
first  sense  would  be  altogether  unrecognisable  unless 
we  had  the  history  of  the  word  recorded  by  its  use  in 
successive  writers  ? 

4.  Great  changes  of  language  are  some- 
times due  to  great  convulsions  in  history ; 
as  when  the  Roman  civilisation  was  destroyed  by 
nations  comparatively  uncivilised  and  the  language  of 
the  Romans  remained  modified  in  different  ways  in 
the  countries  of  which  they  were  the  lords  no  longer. 
Such  great  changes  do  not  often  take  place;  yet  just 
as  surely,  though  more  slowly,  a  gradual 
change  goes  on  in  the  most  peaceful  times,  of 
which  you  cannot  have  a  better  example  than  in  your 
own  English.  *  Well/  you  say,  '  surely  English  has 
not  changed  much  in  the  last  three  hundred  years. 
We  can  read  Shakespeare  without  any  difficulty/  That 
is  saying  a  little  too  much ;  we  are  so  familiar  with 
the  best  parts  of  Shakespeare  that  perhaps  we  are 
hardly  conscious  of  the  difference;  the  words  have 
a  well-known  sound,  and  if  we  are  not  students  of 


8  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

language  we  may  not  examine  them  very  carefully.  But 
open  your  Shakespeare  almost  at  random  and  you  will 
soon  find  out,  if  you  really  consider,  how  much  is  now 
obsolete,  how  many  words  have  passed  out  of  use  or 
are  used  in  a  different  sense.  I  have  opened  on  Mac- 
beth,  Act  i.  Sc.  7,  and  there  I  find  in  Lady  Macbeth's 
speech : — 

"  His  two  chamberlains 
Will  I  with  wine  and  wassail  so  convince 
That  memory,  the  warder  of  the  brain, 
Shall  be  a  fume,  and  the  receipt  of  reason 
A  limbec  only." 

The  general  sense  is  very  plain,  but  then  the 
general  sense  can  often  be  picked  up  out  of  the 
context  without  our  seeing  the  exact  meaning  of  each 
word. 

5.  Now  look  at  a  few  of  the  words  here,  (i) 
*  Chamberlain/  as  we  know,  is  etymologically  a 
man  of  the  chamber ;  it  comes  from  camera,  a 
chamber,  originally  a  vault ;  the  root  of  this  is  cam 
=  to  be  bent  or  crooked,  which  is  supposed  to  be 
the  origin  of  the  name  of  our  most  crooked  river. 
The  old  sense  of  '  chamberlain '  has  not  quite  died 
out  of  our  recollection  ;  yet  when  we  speak  of  the 
Lord  Chamberlain — the  only  person  to  whom  the 
title  is  now  applied — we  don't  think  of  a  man  whose 
business  it  is  to  guard  his  king's  sleep  when  on  a 
journey,  or,  generally,  of  a  bedroom  attendant,  but  of 
one  whose  best  known  duty  is  the  censorship  of  plays. 
(2)  '  Wassail '  is  a  word  which  we  should  expect  to 
find  in  a  historical  novel,  but  not  to  hear  in  every-day 
talk.  We  feel  pretty  sure  that  it  has  something  to  do 
with  good  cheer,  but  we  may  not  know  that  it  was 
originally  a  drinking  of  health  ;  that  was  was  the 
imperative  of  the  verb  was,  i  to  be,'  which  we  have 
turned  into  an  auxiliary  verb  to  mark  past  time  ;  and 
the  last  syllable  is  our  word  hale  =  healthy,  which 
we  have  pretty  well  restricted  to  the  description  of  an 


1.]      THE  CONSTANT  CHANGE  IN  LANGUAGE.       9 

elderly  man,  whom  we  call  '  hale  for  his  years  ; ' 
though  we  are  familiar  with  the  word  in  the  corrupted 
form  whole,  which  we  have  in  the  Bible,  *  I  have  made 
a  man  every  whit  whole  on  the  Sabbath-day ; '  and 
the  corresponding  Greek  word,  as  you  may  see  by 
Grimm's  Law  (see  Appendix  L),  is  kalos.  (3)  Con- 
vince has  wavered  much  in  sense ;  we  use  it  now 
simply  for  persuading  a  person,  but  the  primary  mean- 
ing was  '  to  overpower,'  which  it  has  here ;  in  the 
Bible  phrase  *  Which  of  you  convinceth  me  of  sin  ? '  we 
have  the  same  special  sense  of  overcoming  by  testi- 
mony, which  convincere  had  in  Latin. 

6.  So  again  (4)  Warder,  like  '  wassail '  is  a  word 
with  which  we  are  familiar  from  books,  but  which  we 
should  not  ourselves  use  without  the  appearance  of 
affectation :  we  should  use  the  equivalent  '  guard/ 
We  have  here  a  couple  of  words  identical  in  meaning, 
just  as  we  have  wise  and  guise,  warrant  and  guarantee, 
wager  and  gage,  and  others  which  explain  the  riddle, 
such  as  war  and  French  guerre,  warren  and  French 
garenne.  It  is  well  known  that  in  all  these  the  w 
marks  the  Teutonic  word  introduced  alike  into 
England  by  the  Anglo-Saxons  and  into  France  by  the 
Franks,  which  the  earlier  inhabitants  of  France  were 
unable  to  pronounce  without  letting  a  g  escape  before 
it ;  and  so  they  produced  the  second  form  beginning 
with  gu.  Some  of  these  second  forms  were  brought 
into  England  by  the  Normans,  and  existed  there  by 
the  side  of  the  English  word  brought  long  before; 
but  as  there  was  no  distinction  in  sense,  one  form 
generally  fell  into  disuse,  only  to  be  revived  for  a 
special  purpose,  as  by  Sir  Walter  Scott  to  give  a  medi- 
aeval look  to  his  poems.  (5)  Fume  meant  smoke  or 
steam.  Shakespeare  used  it  metaphorically,  just  as 
we  might  speak  of  a  man's  reason  being  clouded. 
Such  a  use  of  the  word  may  have  been  familiar  at 
his  time,  but  no  such  idea  would  now  attach  to  it ;  if 
we  use  it  at  all,  we  do  so  in  the  old  simple  sense,  as 


io  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

the  '  fumes  of  tobacco/  the  same  sense  which  the 
word  bore  at  Rome  and  in  far-away  India  more  than 
twenty  centuries  ago ;  while  the  Greeks  turned  it,  by 
a  different  metaphor,  to  express  the  steam  of  passion, 
and  Plato  in  his  famous  analysis  distinguished  the 
'  thumoeides,'  the  spirited  part  of  the  soul,  from  that 
part  which  reasons,  and  from  that  part  which  desires. 
(6)  Receipt  seems  to  be  used  of  a  place,  that  place 
where  reason  is  found,  just  as  we  hear  of  Matthew  in 
the  Bible  *  sitting  at  the  receipt  of  custom.'  (7) 
Limbec  has  probably  died  out  altogether.  It  is 
only  the  student  of  the  history  of  the  English  lan- 
guage who  can  guess  that  the  word  is  equivalent  to 
alembic,  which  meant  a  still  or  retort,  and  so  is  used 
here  by  Shakespeare  merely  in  the  sense  of  an  empty 
vessel,  that  into  which  anything  may  be  poured.  The 
word  is  Arabic;  it  was  brought  into  England  with  chemi- 
cal study  like  alchemy  itself,  algebra ,  and  many  others. 
Then  by  degrees  people  fancied  that  the  a  at  the 
beginning  of  the  word  was  our  article,  though  really 
the  first  syllable  al  is  the  Arabic  article  :  and  thus 
lembie  or  limbic  was  left.  The  article  has  often  been 
a  thief  in  England.  It  has  two  forms  an  and  a,  and 
meant  one,  as  you  may  see  in  the  old  Scotch  form, 
'  ane  high  and  michty  lord.'  The  shortened  form  a 
was  naturally  used  before  a  consonant,  but  when  the 
word  began  with  n,  people  did  not  always  see  where 
to  divide  rightly.  Thus  a  nadder  turned  into  an 
adder,  a  napron  has  become  an  apron,  &c. ;  on  the 
other  hand  the  eft  (ewt)  seems  to  have  robbed  the 
article  in  its  turn  and  become  a  newt 

7.  Thus  we  have  examined  one  passage,  and  have 
found  in  its  four  lines  seven  words  which  are  either 
not  used  now  at  all  or  are  used  in  a  different  sense. 
Yet,  as  we  said,  the  passage  as  a  whole  sounds  simple 
enough  when  we  read  it  or  hear  it  on  the  stage.  We 
must  admit  then  that  the  English  of  to  day  differs 
much  from  Shakespeare's  English'  in  the 


I.]      THE  CONSTANT  CHANGE  IN  LANGUAGE.     11 

meaning  of  its  words.  The  main  reason  why  the 
change  does  not  strike  us  at  once  is  that  the  verbs 
and  nouns  have  no  more  inflections  than  they  have  in 
our  every- day  language. 

8.  Take  another  passage,  and  this  time  of  an  author 
but  little   older   than  Shakespeare — Gawin  Douglas, 
who  died  in  1522,  and  who,  as  Sir  Walter  Scott  tells 
us,  was 

"  More  pleased  that  in  a  barbarous  age 
He  gave  rude  Scotland  Virgil's  page, 
Than  that  beneath  his  rule  he  held 
The  bishopric  of  fair  Dunkeld." 

The  lines,  which  are  part  of  the  prologue  to  the 
twelfth  book  of  the  translation  of  the  ^Eneid  run 
as  follows  : — 

"  In  lissouris  and  on  leys  litill  lammys 
Full  tayt  and  tryg  socht  bletand  to  thar  dammys, 
Tydy  ky  lowys,  veilys  by  thame  rynnys, 
All  snog  and  slekit  worth  thir  bestis  skynnys. " 

9.  But  this  is  not  English  at  all,  you  say.    Indeed  it 
is,  quite  as  good  as  Shakespeare's  :  though  its  lineal 
descendant  is  now  no  longer  called  English — Northern 
English  as  it  really  is — but  Scotch ;  which  ought  to  be 
the  name  of  some  Keltic  language.     It  is  true  that 
some  French  words  have  crept  in,  because  of  the  close 
political  and  social  connection  between  Scotland  and 
France  :   but   they  can   be   recognised,  though  very 
queer  they  look.     Thus  a  little  farther  on  we  have 
pastans,  which  is  nothing  but  passe-temps,  our  pastime. 
The   very  common   Scotch,  to  fash   is   nothing   but 
facher:  fashions  is  facheux.     In  this  passage,  veilys  is 
French.     It  is  nothing  but  a  calf,  the  old  French  veel 
(yitellus  in  Latin)  modernised  into  veau.     Now  let  us 
try,  very  quickly,  what  we  can  make  out  of  the  lines. 
First  we  see  that  plural  nouns  still  have,  as  a  rule,  an 
additional  syllable  :  and  this  is  spelt  -is,  or  -ys,  not  -es, 
or  -s,  as  it  would  have  been  farther  south  :  thus  we 


12  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

have  lammys,  dammys,  veilys,  bestis,  skynnys.  But 
there  is  another  plural  form  here— ky ;  this  we  know 
is  still  used  in  the  north  as  the  plural  of  *  cow  '  (cu  in 
Old  English,  and  the  Northerners  still  keep  the  old 
sound).  Then  these  plurals  ky  and  veilys  hint  to  us 
that  lowys  and  rynnys  must  be  plural  verbs — not  sin- 
gular, as  they  look :  and  so  they  are  :  this  was  the 
regular  form  for  the  plural  in  the  north,  as  eth  was  in 
the  south,  and  en  in  the  midlands.  Then  there  is 
the  ensnaring  verb  worth;  which  is  a  form  of  the 
A.-S.  weorthany  the  same  in  meaning  as  the  German 
werdcn.  It  is  present  and  has  no  suffix.  It  is  the 
same  word  (though  how  few  of  us  guess  it !)  as  Sir 
Walter  Scott  could  use  in  the  Lady  of  the  Lake. 

"  Woe  worth  (i.e.  is)  the  chase,  woe  worth  the  day, 
That  cost  thy  life,  my  gallant  gray." 

10.  Then  we  have  the  present  participle  bletand,  with 
the  northern  termination  and;  instead  of  end  (midland) 
and  inde  (south).  Note  lastly  the  Scotch  nominative 
plural  Mr,  quite  unlike  the  southern  *  those ; '  but  it 
has  cousins  in  Iceland.  These  are  all  the  grammatical 
points  which  strike  us  in  these  lines :  but  even  the 
knowledge  of  these,  though  it  may  enable  every  one 
to  guess  the  general  meaning,  will  not  explain  all  the 
words.  Lissouris  is  a  doubtful  form ;  we  have  leasowes 
as  a  name  for  a  pasture  in  some  parts  of  England  : 
and  this  points  to  Anglo-Saxon  lasu ;  but  the  r  is 
strange  in  our  word ;  it  may  have  been  euphonic  (see 
§  36).  Then  what  are  tayt  and  tryg?  We  shall 
not  be  able  to  explain  them  by  the  Anglo-Saxon. 
But  if  we  look  at  Icelandic  we  shall  find  teit-r  (where 
r  is  the  sign  of  the  nominative,  the  same  as  s  in  many 
languages)  meaning  '  glad ; '  and  it  is  also  a  proper 
name  in  Iceland,  so  that  we  feel  little  doubt  that  our 
name  'Tait'  has  descended  in  England  from  a  Norse 
pirate  to  the  present  Archbishop  of  Canterbury.  Tryg 
also  is  to  be  explained  from  the  same  source.  In 


I.]      THE  CONSTANT  CHANGE  IN  LANGUAGE.     13 

Gothic  indeed  triggws  occurs  and  means  'true'  or 
4  faithful/  but  this  does  not  quite  suit  the  sense  here  ; 
it  is  the  Danish  tryg  and  Icelandic  tryggr  which  have 
the  secondary  meaning,  'unconcerned/ 4  secure/  which 
explains  this  use  of  the  word.  No  one  will  wonder 
that  Norse  words  or  forms  (like  Mr)  should  be  found 
on  the  south-east  coast  of  Scotland.  Tydy  seems  to 
be  our  own  word,  which  is  an  adjective  formed  from 
tide  =  '  time '  or  '  season  ; '  so  that  the  natural  mean- 
ing is  'seasonable/  here  'in  good  condition.' 

11.  After  this  explanation  of  all  the  difficulties,  I 
hope  that  you  can  translate  this  old  English  into  the 
speech  of  our  own  day.     If  you  cannot,  here  it  is  in 
flat  prose — 

"  In  pastures  and  on  meadows  little  lambs 
Full  gladsome  and  free  from  care  sought  bleating  to  their  dams, 
Kine  in  good  condition  low,  calves  run  by  them, 
All  smooth  and  sleek  are  those  beasts'  skins." 

The  original  is  full  of  poetry,  but,  if  you  want  to 
feel  that,  you  must  know  how  to  scan  it. 

12.  These  passages  have  shown  us  three  things  in 
our  own  language  ;  (i)  change  constantly  going 
on  in  the  meaning  of  words :  (2)  the  loss  of 
inflexions  in  which  our  speech  was  once  as  rich  as 
any :  (3)  the  fact  has  dawned  that  there  are  different 
kinds  of  English  speech  within  our  four  seas. 
This  last  result  may  seem  strange  to  you.     You  may 
say  :  '  I  grant  that  English  has  changed  with  the  lapse 
of  time,  yet  at  one  and  the  same  time,  there  is  but 
one  English  language  in  England  :  common  people 
may  use  vulgar  words  or  may  pronounce  them  in  a 
vulgar   way,  but   there   is  only  one  correct  kind  of 
English/    But  there  is  a  confusion  here.     By  *  vulgar ' 
you  mean   '  unrefined/  that  which  is  proper  to  un- 
educated people  who  don't  read,  and  therefore  do  not 
speak  that  particular  form  of  English  which  is  now 
found  in  books ;  you  may  call  it  literary  English.  Now 


14  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

these  uneducated  people  are  in  the  main  the  labouring 
classes  who  live  in  the  country :  though  in  the  great 
towns  of  the  North  there  are  plenty  of  these  *  vulgar ' 
words  which  their  speakers  have  inherited  from 
their  fathers  who  lived  in  the  country,  and  which 
they  transmit  to  their  children ;  these  however  will 
undoubtedly  die  out  in  the  town  sooner  than  in  rural 
districts.  Now  the  country  folk  certainly  did  not 
make  these  words  themselves ;  there  is  nothing  that 
they  are  less  likely  to  do.  We  therefore  guess  (and 
history  proves)  that  these  words  which  they  use, 
and  the  sounds  with  which  they  pronounce  them,  are 
remnants  of  the  form  of  English  originally  spoken  in 
that  province,  and  not  merely  spoken,  but  written  in 
books  which  are  of  the  greatest  literary  importance : 
these  we  may  therefore  call  fairly  enough  '  provincial/ 
but  not  '  vulgar,'  except  in  the  sense  that  they  form 
the  '  vulgar  tongue  '  of  the  '  common  '  people.  The 
connexion  between  them  and  vulgarity  is  accidental. 
These  provincial  dialects  were  once  literary  dialects  ; 
they  doubtless  were,  and  still  may  be,  spoken  with  as 
much  refinement  as  our  present  literary  English  :  and 
the  Northern  English,  which  we  call  Scotch,  is  so 
spoken ;  no  doubt  because  Scotland  has  long  had  a 
higher  average  of  education  than  England.  On  the 
other  hand,  literary  English  may  be  pronounced  with 
just  as  much  vulgarity  as  any  other  dialect;  as  when 
we  run  two  syllables  into  one,  or  slur  the  ends  of  our 
words. 

13.  So  we  must  learn  to  recognise  different  forms 
of  English  even  in  our  own  day.  It  is  quite 
true  that  the  area  of  each  of  these  forms  is  diminishing, 
while  that  of  modern  literary  English  is  ever  increasing. 
This  has  been  so  ever  since  printing  began ;  by  which 
the  forms  of  words  of  one  particular  dialect  were 
stereotyped,  so  to  speak,  and  preserved  to  a  great 
degree  from  further  change :  but  it  is  due  still  more  to 
wider  education  :  it  is,  of  course,  literary  English  which 


I.]      THE  CONSTANT  CHANGE  IN  LANGUAGE.     15 

is  taught  at  school ;  and  this  by  degrees  drives  out  the 
provincial  English  which  is  spoken  at  home  ;  and  due 
perhaps  most  of  all  to  the  railroad  which  levels  all 
local  peculiarities.  But  the  comparatively  few  forms 
which  still  remain  in  ordinary  use  are  as  valuable  to 
the  philologist  as  a  rare  flower  just  about  to  become 
extinct  is  to  the  botanist  :  they  connect  the  present 
with  the  past  and  enable  him  to  realise  the  exuberant 
life  which  has  passed  away.  Compared  with  living 
forms  of  speech  in  daily  use,  the  words  of  old  dialects, 
as  recorded  in  literature  only,  are  like  the  dried 
specimens  of  a  botanical  museum. 

14.  It  is  worth  our  while  to  look  a  little  more  closely 
into  these  varieties  of  our  own  language.  They  will 
show  us  in  a  small  compass  the  operation  of  all  or 
nearly  all  those  principles  of  change  which  regulate  the 
development  of  all  language.  The  words  are  for  the 
most  part  familiar  to  us ;  and  inferences  drawn  from 
familiar  facts  are  more  immediately  intelligible  than  if 
we  have  to  explain  the  facts  themselves.  But  this  very 
familiarity  is  a  danger  against  which  it  is  just  as  well  to 
give  a  caution.  Because  an  Englishman  '  knows '  his 
own  language,  he  may  think  that  he  knows  the  history 
of  any  and  every  word  in  it,  without  any  previous  study 
of  it.  He  might  just  as  well  think  that,  because  he 
knows  the  use  of  opium,  he  therefore  knows,  without 
reading,  the  whole  history  of  the  drug,  how  and  where 
it  was  grown,  and  how  it  was  brought  to  England.  I 
once  read  somewhere  a  burlesque  on  literary  soirees, 
and  therein  on  fashionable  etymology.  The  question 
was  the  meaning  of  the  Greek  name  of  Greece,  Hellas. 
One  lady  derived  it  at  once  from  the  lovely  Helen : 
another  said  that  the  name  was  a  classical  ejaculation 
of  sorrow  in  all  ages.  A  prosaic  major  who  had  served 
in  the  country  said  that  these  derivations  were  rather 
fanciful ;  the  name  was  really  '  Hill-as,'  because  you 
couldn't  go  a  mile  without  coming  to  a  hill.  The 
parable  may  show  that  we  may  be  just  as  foolish,  and 

2* 


16  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

in  what  way ;  namely,  when  we  etymologise  as  if  each 
man  were  a  standard  to  himself,  and  ignore  the  laws 
of  philology  which  painful  students  have  discovered. 
In  any  language — our  own  or  that  of  others — until  we 
know  the  history  of  a  word,  and  till  we  know  the 
variations  of  sound  which  distinguish  that  language 
from  other  languages,  every  explanation  we  give  of 
the  word  is  a  guess,  and  much  more  likely  to  be  a 
wrong  guess  than  a  right  one. 

15.  Many  old  grammatical  forms  still  sur- 
vive in  England,  and  can  be  explained  from  our 
older  literature,  or  from  that  of  kindred  peoples.  A 
few  remain  in  our  literary  English ;  in  which  they 
naturally  look  *  exceptions/  and  we  are  tempted  in 
learning  grammar  to  wish  that  they  had  gone  alto- 
gether. Thus  we  regularly  form  our  plurals  by  adding 
es  or  s,  foxes,  books,  &c. ;  but  then  we  make  *  ox/ 
ox-en;  and  this  is  our  only  plural  in  -en  in  regular  use ; 
for  eyne  (eyes),  shoon  and  hosen  are  no  longer  used  by 
writers  of  books,  although  they  are  used  in  all  English 
dialects  and  many  other  forms  of  the  same  sort  are  to 
be  heard  everywhere  south  of  the  Humber.  Thus  in 
Dorsetshire  you  will  hear  of  cheesen  and  housen,  in 
Cambridgeshire  of  housen  and  shippen  (i.e.  sheep). 
In  the  North  you  will  find  (besides  the  regular  -s) 
such  a  plural  as  child-er  (Anglo-Saxon  '  cild-r-u ') ; 
and  you  may  note  that  in  ordinary  English  we  have 
added  on  to  the  word  a  second  plural  suffix  (appa- 
rently because  the  form  in  r  was  so  strange  that  it  did 
not  suffice),  and  say  child-r-en;  kine  is  another  double 
plural,  for,  as  we  saw  before,  the  simple  form  was  ky  ; 
in  Cambridgeshire  there  is  a  similar  form  mis-en  (pro- 
nounced '  meezen  ')  instead  of  mice.  Then  how  are 
plurals  like  mice,  feet,  men,  to  be  accounted  for  ?  In 
these  the  plural  seems  to  be  formed  by  change  of  the 
vowel.  Well,  if  we  knew  nothing  of  the  older  forms 
of  our  language,  these  different  plurals  (which  are,  in 
all,  but  few  compared  with  those  in  s)  would  seem  to 


1.1     THE  CONSTANT  CHANGE  IN  LANGUAGE.     17 

us  mere  accidents;  they  would  puzzle  us,  as  exceptions 
from  the  ordinary  rule,  and  we  should  perhaps  regard 
them  in  the  end  as  curious  mistakes  which  had  some- 
how become  current,  perhaps  like  the  *  vulgar '  forms 
mentioned  above. 

1 6.  But  the  explanation  is  plain  when  we  look  at  the 
different  forms  of  our  older  literature — the  southern 
English  which  was  the  *  literary '  dialect  in  the  days 
of   Alfred,   or  the   midland    English   which   became 
supreme  before   the  end  of   the  fourteenth   century 
mainly   through    the   influence    of    Chaucer,   or   the 
northern  English  form  of  the  first  English  speech  of 
which  we  have  written  record,  the  writings  of  Bede 
and  of  Caedmon,  and  of  which  we  have  already  seen 
something.     These  forms,  so  rare  with  us  now,  were 
regular  then.     Just  as  the  plural  of  A.-S.  did  (child) 
was  dldruj  so  the  plural  of  cealf  (calf)  was   cealfru, 
and    the  plural  of  ceg   (egg)  was   cegru ;   and  if  we 
may  for  a  moment  go  beyond  our  own  speech,  Ice- 
landic  plurals  mostly  contain  an  r  and  end  in  -ar, 
-ir,  or  -ur.      Then  as   regards   the  plural  in  en,  we 
shall  find  in  Anglo-Saxon  that  all  the  nouns  of  the 
simplest  class  formed  their  plural  in  -an,  later  -en : 
but  very  soon  in  southern  English  the  forms  in  -es 
began  to  supersede  those  in  en,  and  later  they  were 
used    indiscriminately,    but   with   the   j-form   always 
gaining  ground.    The  reason  for  this  is  not  far  to  seek  : 
the  Norman-French  plurals  were  formed  in  s,  not  in  n  : 
therefore  when  English  came  to  be  spoken  by  Normans 
they  naturally  formed  plurals  on  their  own  principle, 
and  as  the  English  themselves  used  the  .r-form  at  least 
as  often  as  the  n.  the  chance  against  n  being  used  was 
at  least  three  to  one. 

17.  Lastly,  the  plurals  formed  by  change  of  the  vowel 
of   the  noun,  such  as   'foot/   'feet/   can    be  partly 
explained   by   Anglo-Saxon,    and   still  more  by  the 
kindred   languages  of  the  Continent,   especially  the 
Old  Saxon.     In  Anglo-Saxon  the  plural  is  fet,  where 


i8  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

the  original  vowel  (fot)  has  been  changed  as  much  as 
in  English.  But  in  Old  Saxon  the  plural  is  fdti, 
and  in  Gothic  words  of  the  same  form  we  find 
the  traces  of  the  fuller  suffix  -is.  Now  this  final 
syllable  explains  the  change  of  the  vowel  in  the 
original  syllable.  It  is  a  well-known  phenomenon  in 
language  (of  which  we  shall  see  more  hereafter)  that 
one  sound  affects  another  in  pronunciation ;  that,  for 
example,  if  two  consonants  meet,  which  differ  in  some 
principle  of  their  formation,  and  therefore  are  not 
easily  pronounced  together,  one  generally  modifies  the 
other;  thus  the  plural  of  'fowl1  (fowl  -f  s)  is  really 
pronounced  '  fowlz,'  because  /  is  a  soft  letter  and  s  a 
hard  one  (see  Ch.  VIII.  16  for  the  meaning  of  these 
terms),  and  the  /  changes  it  into  the  soft  z.  Similarly  a 
consonant  can  affect  a  vowel,  and  one  vowel  can  affect 
another,  though  not  generally  in  the  same  syllable  ; 
sometimes  a  vowel  changes  that  of  the  following 
syllable,  as  when  Latin  farilis  becomes  diffirilis ; 
more  commonly  the  vowel  of  the  preceding  syllable 
is  brought  nearer  to — not  made  identical  with — that 
which  follows.  These  plurals  are  examples  of  such 
a  change.  Thus  in  '  foti '  we  have  the  two  vowels 
o  and  /  (<tf-sound) ;  for  o  the  back  of  the  tongue  is 
raised  much  higher  than  for  /  (see  Ch.  VIII.,  25) ; 
e  (sounded  as  in  French  fete)  comes  nearer  to  /  in 
this  respect;  also  the  mouth  is  'rounded'  for  <?, 
that  is,  the  lips  form  a  circular  hole,  the  extremities 
being  brought  nearer ;  but  the  lips  are  not  moved  in 
sounding  either  e  or  /  /  therefore  a  speaker  mindful  of 
the  coming  /,  and  wishing  half  unconsciously  to  spare 
his  labour,  so  modified  the  preceding  syllable  that  he 
sounded  e  instead  of  o  and  said  '  feti.'  Just  so  he 
said  *  menni '  instead  of  '  manni '  for  the  plural  of 
'  man.'  Then  in  process  of  time  the  termination  /, 
like  so  many  others,  was  dropped  and  'feet/  'men,' 
&c.,  alone  were  left.  Yet,  none  the  less,  the  lost 
vowel  had  been  the  cause  of  the  change.  This  we 


L]     THE  CONSTANT  CHANGE  IN  LANGUAGE.     19 

should  certainly  never  have  known  except  by  tracing 
the  history  of  the  vowel  and  by  comparison  with 
kindred  languages,  where  the  same  change  takes 
place.  If  we  had  guessed  from  the  forms  as  we  have 
them  in  use,  we  should  probably  have  said  that  men 
made  the  change  in  order  to  mark  the  plural,  which 
guess  would  have  been  quite  wrong.  But  the  lesson 
which  I  want  you  to  draw  from  these  plurals  is  this : 
that  they  were  all  regular  in  the  parts  of  the 
country  where  they  were  used,  not  (as  they 
now  look)  exceptions  from  some  one  proper  form  ; 
and,  generally,  that  diversity  of  form  to  denote  the 
same  idea  is  the  rule,  not  the  exception,  in  our  lan- 
guage, and  may  be  in  others. 

1 8.  You  may  see  one  more  example  in  the  conjuga- 
tion of  the  verb.  We  have  lost  all  our  plural 
inflections,  so  that  we  say  we  bear,  ye  bear,  they  bear. 
But  this  was  not  so  six  centuries  ago.  There  were 
then  regular  inflections,  but  different  ones  in  different 
parts  of  England.  We  have  seen  already  that  in 
Scotland  the  plural  verb  ended  in  ys,  as  lowys,  berys ; 
in  the  rest  of  the  north  of  England  the  form  was  spelt 
with  -es,  beres ;  in  the  midland  the  form  was  beren,  in 
the  south  bereth;  and  these  forms  are  regularly  found 
in  the  literature  of  these  parts.  They  have  passed 
away  now,  more  than  the  noun-inflections  ;  yet  at  the 
present  day  you  may  hear  in  South  Lancashire, 
Cheshire,  and  Shropshire,  forms  like  they  think-en, 
and  in  Cumberland  and  Lancashire  you  will  regularly 
hear  is  with  a  plural  nominative,  which  strangers 
unwisely  suppose  to  be  bad  grammar.  Now  these 
three  forms  are  all  capable  of  being  traced  back  to  a 
common  origin;  this  was  the  same  which  you  remember 
in  Latin  sunt,  regunt,  &c.;  the  Gothic  form  (nd)  is 
seen  in  rinnand  —  they  run.  But  this  -nt  was  an  in- 
conveniently long  sound  at  the  end  of  a  word,  so  it 
was  shortened  in  different  ways  :  (i)  by  dropping  the 
/  or  d,  which  leaves  us  the  old  midland  form  in  ;/,  and 


20  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

the  modern  Dutch  and  German  forms;  (2)  by  drop- 
ping the  ;/  and  changing  the  /  into  dh,  which  gives  the 
Anglo-Saxon  dh^  'nimatT  (they  take),  whence  the 
southern  English  form  which  is  also  found  in  old 
Frisian  ;  (3)  by  further  changing  the  /,  d,  dh  into  s, 
whence  the  northern  form.  The  Norse  dropped  the 
final  consonant  altogether,  so  that  in  any  part  of 
England  where  they  settled  their  influence  would 
tend  towards  its  loss.  Now,  if  all  the  inflections  had 
varied  in  form  as  much  as  this  one  did  in  our  single 
island,  we  should  rather  have  had  to  speak  of  different 
languages  than  different  dialects  in  England.  But  the 
change  was  not  always  so  great,  and  the  general  loss 
of  the  suffixes,  due  to  Norman  and  Norse  influence, 
has  brought  the  dialects  closer  together  again.  But 
they  did  exist,  and  traces  of  them  exist  to  the 
present  day. 

19.  I  need  not  dwell — for  you  can  do  it  easily  for 
yourselves— on  the  differences  in  different  parts 
of  England  of  the  names  of  things.  What 
would  a  Northerner  make  out  of  a  *  cutty'  or  a  'kime' 
— the  Sussex  names  for  a  wren  and  a  weasel?  A  South 
Saxon  might  be  just  as  puzzled  with  the  Northern 

*  brock  '  for  a  badger,  or  *  cleg '  for  a  horse-fly.     This 
latter  word  is  Norwegian  also — and  was  certainly  intro- 
duced into  West  Cumberland  and  Lonsdale  by  the 
Norwegians  who  settled   there  in  the  tenth  century. 
A  bittern    (the   name  seems  to  come  from  the  old 
French  '  butor/  with  an  n  added  in  England)  is  called 
a  '  bump '   in   Lonsdale,   and  this  is  the  old  Keltic 
name  ;  in  Cumberland  the  two  names  are  run  together 
and  the  bird  is  a  'bitter-bump/  and  in  Lincolnshire,  if 
we  may  trust  Mr.  Tennyson's  'Northern  Farmer/  it  has 
become  mysterious  as  a  '  butter-bump/     The  '  hern- 
shaw  *  (which  seems  to  have  been  the  origin  of  the 

*  handsaw '  from  which  Hamlet  knew  a  hawk),  the 
'heronsew*  of  Cumberland  and  the  *  herringsue '  of 
Whitby,  are  nothing  but  the  French  '  heronceau,'  in 


I.]     THE  CONSTANT  CHANGE  IN  LANGUAGE.     21 

Chaucer  *  heronsewe.'  How  many  different  elements 
have  we  here  in  a  few  words  ?  Keltic,  Saxon,  Scan- 
dinavian (Danish  or  Norwegian),  French.  Look  at 
the  rarer  instance  of  verbs  found  only  in  some 
parts  of  England,  which  are  plainly  not  of  English 
origin,  because  they  cannot  be  explained  from  Anglo- 
Saxon,  nor  yet  from  any  allied  German  speech,  as  the 
French  *  fash '  in  Scotland  ;  in  Scotland  also  the  Norse 

*  gar '  (to  make  or  cause),  found  only  in  Scandinavian 
languages ;  the  Cumberland  '  oss '  (to  take  a  thing  in 
hand),  which   can   be   plausibly  connected   with   no 
language  but  the  original  Keltic. 

20.  Think  next  of  the  difference  of  pronuncia- 
tion of  the  same  name  in  those  parts  of  England 
where  English  has  been  spoken  by  a  race  more  or  less 
alien  in  descent ;  and  in  how  few  parts  of  our  land 
has  this  not  happened?  Thus  in  Scotland,  in  the 
English-speaking  counties  which  border  on  the  land 
where  Gaelic  is  still  the  popular  language,  we  find  /// 
dropped  in  the  commonest  words,  so  that  'that'  is 
sounded  as  'at;'  and  in  some  parts  hw  (—  wh  in 

*  what,'  &c.)  is  superseded  by  f.     Now  both  of  these 
are  Gaelic  peculiarities,  The  Gaelic  language  is  slowly 
but  steadily  retreating  before  the  English,  and  when- 
ever the  Gaels  ceased  to  speak  their  own  language 
and  spoke  English  instead,  they  naturally  kept  their 
habits  of  pronunciation   and   said    'fat'   for    'what.' 
Better  known  than  this  are  the  variations  of  c  (/£-sound). 
Before  the  Norman  conquest  k  was  the  sound  heard, 
but  under  Norman  influence  it  became  the  palatal  ch. 
As  we  saw  above,  *  cild ;  became  '  child  ; '  and  it  has 
often  been  pointed   out  how  the  Roman  'castrum/ 
A.S.  'ceaster/  became  'Chester*  in  the  greater  part 
of  England  ;  but  in  the  provinces  where  English  was 
pronounced  by  the  Danes  who  had  settled  there  and  by 
their  descendants,  the  original  sound,  which  the  Danes 
themselves  had  not  changed,  was  kept,  as  in  the  Lin- 
colnshire '  Caistor/  and  Yorkshire  '  Tad-caster/   So  full 


22  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

many  a  word  varied  in  northern  and  southern  mouths  : 
*  kirk  '  of  the  north  became  *  church '  in  the  south  ; 
a  ' churl'  in  the  south  was  a  'carl'  in  the  north.  In 
the  south-west  of  England  there  are  more  words  which 
have  suffered  this  change,  e.g.  *  black'  is  called  'blatch.' 
The  old  southern  dialect  showed  a  clear  preference  for 
soft  over  hard  sounds,  as  v  rather  than^/J  z  rather  than 
s ;  and  this  still  remains  in  the  south-western  counties, 
as  in'vour'  for  'four,'  'zecret'  for  'secret.'  But  in 
Kent  and  Sussex  this  habit  was  checked,  why,  we 
cannot  tell ;  almost  the  only  instance  of  the  change 
now  heard  in  Kent  is  '  vat '  for  the  old  form,  still 
preserved  in  the  Biblical  'wine-fat ;'  and  this  change  has 
been  made  everywhere.  The  French  cannot  sound  our 
English  «/,  and  probably  French  influence  is  to  be  seen 
in  the  change  to  ?',  and  also  in  the  dropping  of  the 
initial  //  in  the  Cockney  'vot'  =  what  (' hwat/  as  it 
was  formerly  written,  and  is  still  sounded).  The  h- 
sound  in  such  words  is  now  most  clearly  heard  from 
those  who  live  in  parts  of  England  where  Norse  in- 
fluence has  been  predominant.  Many  more  examples 
might  be  given  of  these  variations  of  consonants. 
The  vowel  changes,  such  as  the  passage  of  a  (retained 
in  the  North)  into  o  ('name'  into  'home/  &c.),  are 
too  minute  and  complex  to  be  described  here.  So 
also  are  the  variations  both  in  the  pitch  of  the 
voice  and  in  the  emphasis  laid  on  particular 
syllables,  which  do  more  than  anything  else  to 
specialize  the  pronunciation  of  different  parts  of 
England,  notably  in  the  south  and  east. 

21.  In  our  very  brief  account  of  some  of  the 
changes  which  have  taken  place  in  our  own  language, 
and  are  still  taking  place  in  a  less  degree,  one  very 
important  point  has  come  to  light.  It  is  this,  some 
of  the  changes  can  be  explained;  they  are  not 
accidental ;  there  is  a  reason  for  them ;  and  we 
therefore  expect  that  there  are  reasons  for 
the  other  changes  which  are  yet  obscure  or 


I.]     THE  CONSTANT  CHANGE  IN  LANGUAGE.     23 

unexplained ;  and  so  we  adopt  provisional  hypo- 
theses to  account  for  these  latter  changes — hypotheses 
which  we  must  surrender  if  a  fuller  knowledge  shows 
that  they  are  untenable.  In  a  word,  we  believe  that 
there  are  certain  permanent  principles  regulating  the 
changes  in  our  language,  which,  in  the  derived  scientific 
sense  of  the  word,  we  call  laws ;  and  if  we  find  that 
these  principles  act  in  other  languages  as  well  as  our 
own,  we  say  that  these  laws,  or  some  of  them,  are 
universal  in  their  application;  and  this  is  the  justi- 
fication of  our  claim  that  there  is  a  Science 
of  Language.  It  is  quite  true  that  in  some  depart- 
ments of  the  science  the  principles  are  difficult,  if  not 
impossible,  to  ascertain ;  thus  the  changes  of  the 
meanings  of  words  are  due  to  various  and  often  very 
subtle  mental  associations ;  and  therefore  the  laws 
which  govern  them  must  also  be  so  numerous  and  so 
complicated  in  their  action,  that  it  is  often  impossible 
to  say  which  is  at  work  in  a  particular  case.  Yet  even 
here  something  can  be  done.  We  can  trace  histori- 
cally the  changes  of  meaning  in  many  different  words, 
and  see  what  the  changes  have  in  common.  For 
instance,  we  can  see  how  words  which  have  a  general 
meaning  come  to  be  restricted  to  one  special  sense  ; 
as  in  our  own  language  'artist,'  ' undertaker,'  'harbour/ 
'  hustings/  &c.  You  may  trace  principles  of  change,, 
such  as  this,  in  many  languages.  But  for  this  we  have 
not  now  time :  and  so  I  pass  on  to  consider  the  simple 
principles  which  regulate  the  changes  of  the  form  and 
of  the  sound. 

22.  Let  me  begin  with  a  caution.  We  have  seen 
words  constantly  undergoing  change  of  form.  This 
change,  we  found,  was  checked  when  one  parti- 
cular dialect  of  a  language  is  adopted  for  literary 
purposes;  and  it  has  often  been  pointed  out  how 
much  the  English  translation  of  the  Bible  has  done 
for  the  permanence  of  the  dialect  of  English  then 
used  by  educated  men ;  how  little  the  change  of  form 
3 


24  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

has  since  been.  But  this  is  true  of  the  form  only ; 
it  is  not  true  of  the  sounds  of  the  words  written  in  the 
Bible.  They  have  changed  so  greatly  that  it  is  not 
too  much  to  say  that  the  Bible  as  read  now  by  you 
and  me,  would  be  barely  intelligible  to  its  translators. 
Here,  then,  the  form  of  the  word  has  in  each  case 
been  fixed  by  printing;  but  the  great  principle  of 
incessant  change  has  been  operating  all  the  while  on 
the  sounds  of  the  language,  and  will  continue  to 
operate  as  long  as  English  is  a  spoken  language. 
This  is  the  reason  of  the  so-called  <  arbitrary ' 
character  of  English  spelling.  The  sounds  do  not 
now  correspond  regularly  to  their  symbols,  the  letters 
of  the  alphabet.  But  they  did  correspond  at  the  time 
when  priming  came  in  ;  not  perhaps  entirely,  for  it  is 
probable  that  our  fathers,  like  ourselves,  h'ad  more 
vowel-sounds  than  the  vowel-symbols  which  they  had 
to  express  them ;  but  at  least  they  corresponded  very 
much  more  than  they  do  now.  Bear  in  mind,  then, 
that  the  same  symbol  does  not  always  represent  the 
same  sound  ;  and  that  the  changes  of  the  form  are 
not  necessarily  any  measure  of  the  change  in  the 
sound  of  a  word.  When  we  are  examining  the 
history  of  dead  languages  we  have  only  the  form  to 
work  upon  ;  we  cannot  tell  how  it  sounded  when 
spoken  ;  and  we  are  therefore  obliged  to  assume  that 
the  form  and  sound  regularly  corresponded ;  that  a, 
for  example,  was  always  sounded  as  we  sound  it 
in  '  father/  and  had  not  also  the  further  sounds  which 
it  has  in  '  fate '  or  '  fat.'  It  is  to  be  hoped  that  we  are 
right  in  our  assumption.  In  any  case  the  possible 
varieties  in  the  sounds  of  the  consonants  are  but 
slight ;  the  vowels  are  more  likely  to  vary. 

23.  Now  what  has  the  general  direction  of 
consonantal  change  been  in  England?  We 
have  seen  consonants  dropped  off  at  the  end  of  words 
— s  and  ;/  from  nouns — s  and  th  from  verbs  ;  and  we 
have  good  reason  for  believing  that  this  was  greatly 


I.]     THE  CONSTANT  CHANGE  IN  LANGUAGE.     25 

due  to  the  language  being  learnt  and  spoken  by  the 
Normans  when  they  were  coalescing  with  the  English. 
What  is  the  obvious  explanation?  Clearly  that  the 
Normans  had  no  mind  to  trouble  themselves  with 
learning  English  grammar;  and  that  the  breaking  down 
of  the  English  inflections  was  the  readiest  way  to 
mutual  intelligibility.  We  have  seen  phenomena  of  the 
same  sort  where  the  Danes  were  established — not  quite 
the  same  changes,  but  the  same  result ;  Norman  and 
Dane  alike  got  something  which  gave  them  less  trouble. 
But,  quite  apart  from  these  foreign  influences,  we  saw 
changes  going  on  in  the  English  itself.  We  saw  the 
old  form  of  the  plural  3rd  person  (nt)  changed  into 
11  or  s  or  th.  What  was  the  cause  of  this  ?  When 
we  find  changes  similar  to  our  own  in  widely  distant 
languages,  not  only  Teutonic,  but  Scandinavian  (in 
which  the  n  and  t  are  lost  altogether)  and  Greek 
(where  they  are  represented  by  s) ;  when  we  find  nt 
preserved  in  Latin,  but  gradually  wasted  in  French, 
Italian,  &c,  the  offshoots  of  Latin;  we  can  have  no 
doubt  that  the  cause  is  a  general  one,  and  no 
other  sufficient  cause  presents  itself  but  that  which  is 
characteristic  of  all  human  action — the  desire  to  do 
what  is  to  be  done  with  the  least  expendi- 
ture of  energy.  This  desire  is  not  consciously  felt 
in  all  action  ;  but  if  not,  it  is  present  unconsciously ; 
and,  in  language,  man  instinctively  endeavours  to  make 
his  utterance  as  easy  as  possible,  consistently  with 
being  intelligible.  This  common  cause  will  act  in 
many  different  ways,  of  which  I  will  only  point  out 
some  of  the  most  important. 

24.  (i.)  People  will  substitute  an  easier  sound 
for  a  sound  or  combination  of  sounds  which  • 
they  find  difficult;  or  they  will  drop  the 
sound  altogether.  The  change  of  nt,  which  we 
have  just  been  considering,  is  an  example  of  this; 
and  the  unanimity  with  which  it  was  changed,  though 
in  different  ways,  is  a  good  proof  that  such  a  com- 


26  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

bination  was  universally  found  disagreeable  at  the  end 
of  a  word.  Even  the  Latin,  though  it  had  rcgunt 
in  the  present,  had  a  weaker  form  in  partial  use  for 
the  perfect — rexerunt  and  rexere.  There  is  no  diffi- 
culty in  pronouncing  the  sounds  nt  together,  when 
one  ends  a  syllable  and  the  other  begins  one ;  they 
occur  so  without  being  changed  in  all  languages ;  we 
have  pantos  in  Greek  ;  confer  is  the  French  corruption 
of  computarC)  but  it  is  changed  no  further  \firmamentiini 
is  an  example  of  one  of  the  commonest  kinds  of  deri- 
vative nouns  in  Latin.  Our  firmament  and  others  of 
the  class  do  not  strike  us  as  difficult ;  they  show  that 
even  at  the  end  of  a  word  the  sound  is  not  insuperably 
difficult.  We  see  from  it  that  the  weakening  of  ;//  in 
such  a  position  is  only  a  general  tendency  of  language, 
not  an  invariable  rule. 

25.  The  reason  of  the  different  treatment  of  the 
noun  and  the  verb  is  twofold.  First,  when  berent 
was  weakened  into  beren,  or  bereth,  or  bere,  no  con- 
fusion arose,  because  each  person  of  the  plural  was 
distinguished  by  the  nominative  case  which  went 
with  it;  but  if  the  termination  of  a  derived  noun 
like  'firmament1  be  lost,  the  whole  character  of  the 
word  is  in  danger  of  perishing.  Secondly,  the  personal 
suffixes  of  the  verb  were  much  more  used  than  any 
one  formative  suffix  like  -went ;  therefore  it  was  more 
important  to  have  an  easy  form  for  them ;  they  were 
rubbed  away,  as  we  mav  say,  under  the  wear  and 
tear  of  daily  use.  The  difference  in  these  two  cases 
illustrates  what  I  said  above  ;  speech  is  to  be  made  as 
easy  as  possible  within  the  limits  of  intelligibility. 
When  it  is  consciously  felt  that  further  change  would 
make  a  word  unintelligible,  it  generally  remains  un- 
changed ;  but  even  this  limitation  is  often  exceeded. 
French  especially  gives  us  numerous  examples  of 
pairs  of  words  originally  quite  distinct  which  have 
come  into  the  same  form  by  a  long  process  of  corrup- 
tion. Thus,  the  old  French  du  (obligation)  is  con- 


I.]     THE  CONSTANT  CHANGE  IN  LANGUAGE.     27 

tracted  from  deti,  which  can  be  traced  back  to 
de(b}u(tus\  a  barbarous  participle  of  debeo ;  du,  the 
genitive  of  the  article,  is  for  deu  =  del  =  de  /<?,  where 
le  represents  Latin  ille*  These  words  when  written 
are  distinguished  by  the  accentual  mark. 

26.  Some  sounds  seem  to  be  felt  more  difficult  than 
others  in  most,  if  not  all,  the  languages  of  Europe. 
Thus  gutturals  pass  into  labials  occasionally ;  but  the 
contrary  change  is  hardly  found.    These  changes,  how- 
ever, are  not  numerous  in  any  language.     As  a  rule 
we  find  the  same  sounds  altered  in  different 
ways    in    different    languages  ;    or    different 
sounds  objected   to   in    different   languages. 
These  two  kinds  of  change  produced  in  the  beginning 
the  differences  of  the  languages ;   which  differences 
afterwards  increased  according  as  the  languages,  once 
separated,  varied  their  forms  still  further,  each  in  its 
own  way,  and  also  increased  their  stock  of  words  by 
borrowing  from  different  sources. 

27.  Of  the  first  kind  take  the  changes  of  k  (c)  in 
French  and  in  Italian ;  in  French,  it  is  changed  into 
ch  (pronounced  s/i)  only  before  a;  so  camera  becomes 
chambre,  though  sometimes  the  a  may  change  after- 
wards into  /  or  e  as  in  chien  (cams)  or  chemin  (caminus). 
We  have  already  seen  how  this  change  spread  into 
England,  where  it   acted  without  distinction  of  the 
following  vowel  as  in  child.     In  Italian,  on  the  con- 
trary, it  is  not  before  #,  but  before  /  or  e  that  the 
change  into  ch  (pronounced  tcti)  occurs,  as  in  cicerone; 
the  original  of  the  title  was  certainly  called  '  Kikero.' 
In  English  we  let  the  sound  sink  to  s  in  the  combi- 
nation where  the  Italian  has  ch;  it  is  a  shame  to  say 
how  we  miscall  Cicero ;  and  '  castrum '  has  suffered 
further  change  in  Ciren-cester,  Glou-cester,  &c,  ;  in 
some  cases  we  keep  the  tch  sound,  as  in  child,  chest. 
Every  one  of  these  different  changes  has  the  same 
origin ;  they  all  arise  from  not  raising  up  the  tongue 
sufficiently  toward  the  back  part  of  the  palate ;  it  is 


28  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

raised  toward  the  middle  part  instead;  and  this  is  a 
less  constrained  position. 

28,  S  is  a  sound  which  has  been  found  difficult  in 
many  languages,  especially  in  the  middle  or  at  the 
end  of  a  word.     The  Greeks  in  particular  commonly 
dropped  it  altogether,  or  at  the  beginning  of  a  word 
changed  it  into  h.    The  Latins  changed  it  into  r — not 
quite  the  r  which  we  sound  in    England,  but  that 
which  you  hear  in  France,  and  to  a  less  degree  in 
Scotland,  a  '  trilled '  letter,  as  it  is  technically  called, 
made   by   laying  the   fore  part  of  the   tongue   very 
loosely  along  the  palate,  and  then  making  it  vibrate 
by  a  sharp  breath  (Ch.  VI II.,  19).     The  position  of 
the  mouth  for  s  is  very  similar ;  but  the  tongue  is  held 
more  firmly.     The  change  has  been  very  frequent  in 
the   Scandinavian   languages ;    it  was  also  found   in 
Frisian,  and  in  Saxon,  both  on   the  Continent  and 
in  England.      Thus  iron  in    Old  English  was  isen; 
and  our  commonest  verbs  show  the  same  change : 
art  is  for  ast,  are  for  ase;  the  root  of  the  verb  was 
as,  then    es,  as  you  see  in    Latin   es-t :  were  is  for 
west,  the  root  being  vas  =  *  to  dwell : '  cp.  the  German 
wesen.     But  this  distaste  for  /  did  not  lead  to  its  loss 
from  any  of  these  languages;  it  was  merely  superseded 
by  other  sounds  in  different  degrees. 

29.  Instances  of  the  second  kind  of  substitution, 
which  arises  from  different  sounds  being  disliked  by 
different  peoples,  are  tolerably  familiar.    I  have  already 
spoken  of  the  French  dislike  of  //  (Ch.  I.,  20).     It  has 
either  been  dropped  altogether,  as  in  avoir  (habere) 
or  retained  in  spelling  without  being  sounded.     The 
French  also  disliked/  and  /;  in  the  middle  of  a  word ; 
so  that  Latin  ripa  became  rive:  avoir  is  from  habere, 
as  I  have  just  said.     Every  one  knows  how  much  a 
German  or  a  Frenchman  dislikes  the  two  sounds  which 
we  now  represent  by  ///,  the  sound  of  th  in  '  thin/  and 
of  dh  in  'then.1     To  us  they  seem  perfectly  simple 
and  natural  sounds.     On  the  other  hand,  we  cannot 


I.]      THE  CONSTANT  CHANGE  IN  LANGUAGE.     29 

away  with  the  gutturals  which  are  so  simple  to  a 
German — the  sounds  heard  in  nach  and  ich  (which 
differ  slightly).  Yet  our  writing  shows  plainly  enough 
that  these  sounds  formerly  existed  in  our  language  : 
the  gh  in  l  through,'  c  mighty/  and  such  like  words, 
was  not  always  meaningless ;  and  something  of  the 
sound  is  still  heard  in  Scotland,  where  (as  you  will 
often  have  observed)  the  old  sounds  of  English  have 
been  preserved  more  faithfully  than  in  the  South.  We 
have  either  dropped  the  sound  altogether,  or  changed 
it  into  f  ('  laugh '),  or  modified  the  whole  word  in 
some  strange  way  to  avoid  the  difficulty.  We  may  see 
all  forms  in  our  variations  of  the  word  burgh,  which 
we  sometimes  call  burg,  as  in  Petersburg,  sometimes 
bury,  as  in  Sudbury,  sometimes  pronounce  as  bruff 
(Cumberland).  In  its  general  sense  we  pronounce 
the  word  borough,  and  so  the  old  Roman  camp 
(' Brough  Castle')  is  pronounced  in  Norfolk;  some- 
times the  sound  and  symbol  are  gone  alike,  as  in 
<  Peterbro.' 

30.  Often  a  language  rejects  some  class  of  sounds  alto- 
gether: the  Greeks  disliked  the  continuous  consonants 
(Ch.  VIII.,  17),  and  had  neither  a  ch  (as  the  Germans 
sound  it),  nor  a  y,  nor  a  v  (except  in  dialects),  nor  sh, 
nor  th,  nor  dh,  nor  always  s,  nor  z  (as  sounded  in 
'freeze').  Nay,  the  Greek  may  be  distinguished  in 
a  general  way  from  the  Latin  as  a  language  which 
disregarded  its  consonants,  and  greatly  developed  its 
vowel-system  :  while  the  Latin  was  conservative  of  its 
consonants,  and  let  its  vowels  sink  from  the  fuller  to 
the  thinner  sound — from  a  and  o  to  e  and  /.  Sanskrit 
is  distinguished  by  its  comparative  poverty  in  vowels, 
and  by  the  very  great  extension  of  its  consonants.  Not 
only  has  it  momentary  and  protracted  consonants  of 
every  class — guttural,  palatal,  dental,  labial,  but  also 
a  separate  class  of  consonants,  ranging  between  the 
palatals  and  the  dentals.  It  has  the  apparently 
superfluous  wealth  of  five  symbols  for  nasals,  and  of 


30  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

course  corresponding  sounds;  in  reality,  however, 
most  European  languages  have  more  than  two  nasals, 
but  not  symbols  for  them.  We  have  the  guttural 
nasal  heard  in  *  sing/  but  no  symbol  except  n& ;  the 
Spanish  has  the  *  palatal  nasal,'  the  sound  of  which 
we  try  to  denote  by  ny.  Still  no  language  but  Sanskrit 
has  five.  We  have  not  time  to  dwell  further  on  these 
specialities  of  different  languages;  they  form  part 
of  the  phonetic  system  of  each,  and  this  is  in  every 
case  a  lengthy  subject.  But  I  have  said  enough  to 
show  that  each  nation  shuns  some  particular  sounds, 
and  tries  in  different  ways  to  find  some  easier  utterance 
in  their  place.  The  sound  is  not  absolutely  lost,  but 
avoided  as  far  as  possible.  And  we  may  be  pretty 
sure  that  in  the  spoken  language  the  corruption  com- 
monly extends  further  than  in  the  written  literature. 
In  England,  as  we  have  seen,  original  a  has  passed 
into  o  in  several  words,  as  home,  bone,  &c.  But  in  the 
south-west  of  England  many  other  words  are  pro- 
nounced with  an  o  where  literary  English  keeps  the  a, 
as  land,  hand,  &c. 

31.  (ii.)  There  is  another  very  common  way  by 
which  ease  of  utterance  is  aimed  at.  We  have  already 
seen  instances  of  the  principle  (Ch.  I.,  17);  how  the 
plural  manni  changed  into  menni  (later  men)  from  the 
influence  of  the  /upon  the  a:  it  drew  the  a  nearer  to 
itself,  into  the  form  e,  which  lies  between  the  two,  a 
and  /  (Ch.  VIII.,  24).  This  is  technically  called  Assi- 
milation. In  these  cases  a  vowel  acts  upon  a  vowel 
without  being  in  contact  with  it;  and  this  form  of 
assimilation  is  especially  common  in  Germany,  where 
inann  forms  as  its  plural  manner,  and  the  adjective 
mdnnlich  (manly).  But  the  change  occurs  most  com- 
monly when  two  consonants  meet  which  are  incom- 
patible, or  at  least  difficult  to  pronounce  together.  In 
Latin  the  word  sella  is  made  up  of  sed  +  la,  the 
sitting-thing  ;  now  d  requires  a  perfect  block  of  the 
mouth  by  the  tongue,  whilst /requires  an  opening  on  one 


I.]     THE  CONSTANT  CHANGE  IN  LANGUAGE.     31 

or  both  sides  of  the  tongue  (Ch.  VIII.,  18) ;  and  these 
two  positions  are  incompatible.  So  the  expectation  of 
this  difficulty  causes  a  change  beforehand,  that  of  d 
into  /.  The  assimilation  may  be  complete,  as  in 
sdla,  where  the  two  consonants  become  the  same ; 
or  incomplete  when  they  only  are  made  more  like  ; ' 
this  takes  place  in  cases  like  fowlz  (fowl  +  s)  men- 
tioned above — /  and  z  are  both  soft  consonants,  and 
therefore  more  alike  than  /and  s,  which  is  hard.  The 
latter  form  of  change  is  very  common  in  every  lan- 
guage ;  so  common  that  we  hardly  notice  them,  espe- 
cially in  our  own  language,  where  they  are  concealed 
by  the  spelling.  The  former  is  seen  in  A.S.  wif-man, 
later  wimman,  now  '  woman  ; '  the  English  here,  as 
generally,  lets  one  of  the  two  m's  drop.  In  ancient 
languages  Latin  was  perhaps  the  most  affected  by 
this  principle,  and  French  inherited  it  from  Latin,  and 
carried  it  on  still  further.  Thus  in  Latin  ad-rideo 
became  arrideo,  d  passing  into  r;  it  remained  in 
quadratu$)  but  has  changed  in  French  carre.  So 
fourrave  (forage)  is  from  old  French  forre,  which  = 
Low  Latin  fodrum;  the  word  was  borrowed  from  the 
German — we  have  the  parallel  form  fodder. 

32.  (iii.)  There  is  a  change  the  opposite  of  the 
last,  which,  however,  is  much  more  rare  ;  we  call  it 
Dissimilation.  This  takes  place  when  there  is  a 
recurrence  of  the  same  sound,  or  of  two  sounds  which 
are  formed  in  the  same  way,  as  /  and  d.  It  is  incon- 
venient to  place  the  organs  of  speech  so  soon  in  the 
same  position  again;  therefore  one  of  the  two  is 
changed  into  a  more  distant  sound.  A  good  example 
of  this  is  to  be  seen  in  Latin ;  ed  is  a  root  meaning 
to  eat,  and  edit  means  '  he  eats ' — but  there  is  an 
older  form  est,  which  results  from  the  d  coming  into 
contact  with  the  /  without  an  intervening  /.  You  can- 
not say  '  ed-t/  and  therefore  the  d  was  changed  into 
s  in  '  est/  even  at  the  risk — as  schoolboys  know  to 
their  cost— of  confusing  '  est '  (he  eats)  with  '  est '  (he 
3* 


32  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

is).  An  example  of  change  where  the  sounds  are  at 
some  distance  is  to  be  seen  in  French ;  the  Latin 
peregrinus  has  become  pelerin  (our  '  pilgrim ')  to  avoid 
the  r  in  two  successive  syllables;  and  we  have 
pellegrino  in  Italian,  but  there  has  been  no  change  in 
the  Spanish  *  peregrino.'  The  reason  why  dissimilation 
is  much  less  frequent  than  assimilation  is  plain.  There 
is  much  more  likelihood  that  different  sounds  will 
come  together  in  an  inconvenient  way  than  that  the 
same  or  very  similar  sounds  will  so  recur. 

33.  (iv.)  Another  cause  of  change  of  words  is 
indistinct  articulation.  This  is  common  enough 
in  individual  men ;  special  peculiarities,  however,  have 
no  effect  upon  a  whole  language.  But  often  there  is 
some  sound,  which  is  felt  to  be  difficult  by  a  whole 
people ;  and,  instead  of  a  mere  change  in  the  way  we 
have  seen  above,  it  is  sometimes  pronounced  without 
sufficient  care  and  exactness ;  and  this  brings  about 
different  results.  The  commonest  is  this :  another 
sound  is  heard  together  with  the  difficult  one.  We 
saw  above  (Ch.  I.,  6)  that  the  Kelts  in  France  found 
a  difficulty  in  the  w  at  the  beginning  of  the  German 
words  introduced  by  the  Franks,  such  as  werra, 
which  they  turned  into  guerre.  This  arose  from  an 
imperfect  attempt  to  pronounce  the  w.  W\s  sounded 
by  raising  the  back  of  the  tongue  towards — but  not  so 
as  to  touch — the  back  of  the  palate,  and  by  round- 
ing the  lips.  Now  if  the  tongue  be  raised  a  very 
little  more — so  as  to  touch  the  palate — a  slight  g 
will  be  heard,  because  the  tongue  has  unintentionally 
been  put  for  a  second  into  the  exact  position  for  g. 
This  g  may  therefore  be  said  to  be  produced  by  in- 
distinct articulation.  In  process  of  time  it  became 
firmly  established,  and  even  expelled  the  parent  w; 
which  though  written  as  //  is  no  longer  heard,  either 
in  guerre,  or  in  English  guarantee,  &c.  When  a  Latin 
word  began  with  a  y~ sound,  as  iocus,  the  Italians 
allowed  a  d  to  slip  in  before  it ;  and  so  iocus  is  now 


I.]     THE  CONSTANT  CHANGE  IN  LANGUAGE.     33 

sounded  nearly  as  our  joke — but  spelt  gioco.  In 
words  beginning  with  j  which  we  have  derived  from 
the  French,  we  do  not  keep  the  French  /-sound  pure; 
we  let  the  d  come  in  before  they — compare  English 
jealous  and  French  jaloux.  Yet  we  have  in  the 
middle  of  a  word  the  same  sound  as  the  French — 
e.g.  in  '  pleasure/  where  it  is  strangely  disguised  by  the 
spelling.  It  is  not  necessary,  however,  that  a  sound 
should  be  distasteful  to  a  people  for  it  to  undergo 
such  changes  as  these,  though  that  was  commonly 
the  reason.  K  is  a  sufficiently  popular  sound  •  yet  in 
several  languages  for  want  of  sufficient  care  a  w  sprung 
up  after  it  in  certain  words.  A  well-known  example  is 
the  change  of  kankan  (apparently  the  original  form 
of  '  five ')  into  quinque  in  Latin  ;  you  will  see  how 
easily  this  took  place  if  you  understood  the  explanation 
of  '  guerre ? — k  and  g  are  pronounced  with  the  tongue 
raised  in  just  the  same  way  toward  the  back  of  the 
palate,  the  only  thing  further  required  for  w  is  to  round 
the  lips,  and  this  being  done  carelessly  in  Latin  kw 
(~  qu)  was  sometimes  heard  instead  of  k.  A  further 
extension  took  place  in  other  languages  :  kw  passed 
into  p.  The  lips  after  being  once  employed  in  sound- 
ing the  w  took  all  the  work  and  turned  the  guttural 
into  a  pure  labial ;  hence  you  find  pente  in  Greek  for 
4  five/  panchan  in  Sanskrit,  and  pump  in  Welsh.  These 
changes  must  have  taken  place  independently,  for  the 
Old  Irish  retains  the  guttural  (coic\ 

34.  Another  result  of  indistinct  articulation  is  to 
be  seen  in  a  vowel  added  at  the  beginning  of  a  word, 
generally  before  an  awkward  combination  of  con- 
sonants. In  such  a  case  it  is  easier  to  use  a  slight 
amount  of  vowel-sound  in  order  to  get  the  consonants 
uttered.  This  was  very  common  in  Greek.  Good 
examples  are  to  be  seen  in  French.  Latin  species 
became  in  France  espece ;  epice  (spice)  is  the  same  word 
a  little  disguised :  stare  became  ester,  schola  passed 
into  escole  and  then  aole.  Spanish  has  the  same  use. 


34  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY;  [CHAP. 

A  curious  parallel  to  ecoh  is  found  in  the  Welsh 
y-sgol:  the  word  of  course  has  been  borrowed  from 
the  Latin,  directly  or  through  the  English,  but  the 
prefix  is  the  Welsh  attempt  to  avoid  the  difficulty, 
and  occurs  in  other  words  as  y-sbryd  =  French  e-sprit. 
In  English  this  phenomenon  is  not  found ;  but  the  s 
at  the  beginning  of  several  words  such  as  scratch, 
screech,  &c.,  which  is  not  part  of  the  root,  may  be  a 
result  of  lazy  articulation. 

35.  We  have,  however,  often  added  a  letter  at  the 
end  of  a  word  through  mere  laziness  :  such  is  the  d 
in  sound  (French  son  from  Latin  sonus)  lend  (but  there 
is  no  d  in  loari),  &c. ;  cp.   German  niemand,  abend. 
The  reason  is  that  the  organs  of  speech  are  in  just 
the  same  position  in  pronouncing  d  as  in  pronouncing 
;//  but  in  pronouncing  ;/  the  air  passes  not  merely 
through  the  mouth,  but  also  through  the  cavity  at  the 
back  of  the  mouth  (called  the  pharynx),  and  so  issues 
through  the  nostrils.     Now  let  a  portion  of  the  breath 
be   retained   in    the   mouth  after  that  which  passes 
through  the  nostrils  is    spent ;   when    the  tongue  is 
removed,  and  the  breath  passes  out,  an  unintended  d  is 
produced  (Ch.  VIIL,  17).     In  provincial  English  you 
may  h ear  gou >nd.     Ancient,  pheasant,  tyrant,  are  good 
examples  of  7  which  has  added  itself  in  English  to 
words  introduced  through  France :  it  has  also  crept 
into  several   English  words  which   end  with  s  after 
another  consonant,  as  whils-t,  agains-t,  amongs-t,  &c. 
This  addition  of  sound  at  the  end  of  a  word  is  not 
however  a  very  common  phenomenon  in  languages. 

36.  But  very  common  is  the  production  of  such  a 
consonant  in  the  middle  of  a  word.  The  reason  of  this 
is  simple  :  in  passing  from  the  position  required  for 
one  sound  to  that  required  for  another,  the  organs  of 
speech  may  be  in  the  position  for  a  third  sound  ;  and 
if  the  break  between    the   first  and   second   be   not 
sharply  marked  by  the  speaker,  the  third  sound  is 
very  likely  to  be  heard.     Thus  in  English  and  French 


I.]     THE  CONSTANT  CHANGE  IN  LANGUAGE.     35 

alike  the  Latin  humilis  has  become  hum-b-le :  the  b 
has  nothing  to  do  with  the  meaning  of  the  word  :  it 
has  slipped  in  when  the  mouth  opens;  after  sounding 
m,  before  the  following  /;  the  position  for  sounding  b 
and  m  being  the  same,  just  as  we  saw  it  was  the  same 
for  n  and  d;  and  so  camera  has  passed  into  cham-b-er, 
and  thunor  into  thun-d-er.  It  is  noticeable  that 
Northern  English  (partly  because  of  the  fuller  sound 
of  its  vowels)  has  often  retained  the  pure  form  :  thus 
thunner  is  still  heard  in  Cumberland,  and  thimel,  not 
thim-b-le,  .and  aurnry  (a  cupboard)  the  French  armoire, 
which  has  passed  into  awmbry  in  ecclesiological 
English.  Ramble,  tumble,  and  some  other  verbs  owe 
their  b  to  this  source ;  neither  of  these  words  has  the 
b  in  Cumberland.  Spanish  shows  a  greater  tendency 
to  this  insertion  than  any  other  Romance  language  : 
thus  we  have  French  homme,  Spanish  hombre,  Italian 
nome  (name)  but  Spanish  nombre.  Well-known  ex- 
amples from  Latin  are  the  perfects  sum-p-si,  prom-p-si, 
and  the  supines  sum-p-tum,  prom-p-tum:  there  are 
plenty  in  Greek,  one  being  ambrosia.  In  a  small 
number  of  English  words  we  find  an  intrusive 
r,  which  seems  to  be  due  to  another  r;  it  is  indeed 
a  sort  of  echo  of  it,  as  in  part-r-idge,  cart-r-idge, 
co-r-poral  (French  '  caporal '),  brideg-r-oom,  where  the 
last  half  of  the  word  is  giima  a  man,  the  equivalent  of 
Latin  homo.  N  has  slipped  into  a  few  words  before 
£•,  as  in  nightingale,  which  in  older  English  is  nihtegale  ; 
galan  is  'to  sing'  in  Anglo-Saxon,  and  is  found  in 
Chaucer :  so  also  in  passe-n-ger,  messe-n-ger;  the  older 
form  of  both  these  words  is  seen  in  French. 

37.  These  are  the  principal  ways  in  which  words 
have  been  altered  in  such  a  way  that  the  new  sound 
is  easier  than  the  old  one.  We  have  seen  that  there 
is  always  a  reason  for  the  change,  which  can  be  given 
if  we  know  the  mechanism  by  which  the  sounds 
are  made.  If  you  will  look  at  the  short  descrip- 
tion of  the  different  sounds  (Ch.  VIIL,  16 — 25)  you 
4 


36  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

will  find  the  explanation  of  any  terms  which  you  may 
have  found  difficult  in  the  examples  which  I  have 
given. 

38.  There  is  a  change  rather  common  in  language 
which  is  closely  connected  with  those  I  have  just 
described,  to  which  I  wish  to  call  your  attention  for  a 
moment.  This  is  the  desire  sometimes  felt  to  make 
up  for  the  loss  which  a  word  has  sustained.  For 
example,  when  a  consonant  has  been  dropped  out  of 
a  word,  the  speakers  seem  to  have  sometimes  had 
an  uneasy  feeling  that  the  word  had  been  unduly 
shortened  :  and  therefore,  to  make  up,  they  lengthened 
the  vowel.  Thus  there  is  a  very  old  word  found  in 
a  great  many  languages,  ghansa,  which  meant  some 
kind  of  water-bird  ;  it  has  become  owe  goose.  In  German 
the  bird  is  called  gans,  but  in  Anglo-Saxon  the  ;/  was 
dropped,  and  to  make  up  for  this  loss  the  vowel  was 
lengthened,  so  that  the  name  became  go's,  and  the 
vowel,  though  changed,  is  still  long  with  us.  By  pre- 
cisely the  same  principle  in  Greek  s  was  dropped  (not 
n  as  with  us)  and  the  vowel  lengthened  in  khtn :  the 
Romans  kept  the  ;/  and  s  in  hanser.  I  have  already 
said  that  the  Greek  language  was  especially  remarkable 
for  dropping  consonants  ;  and  therefore  Greek  nouns, 
participles,  and  verbs  provide  countless  examples  of 
this  compensation,  as  the  principle  is  commonly 
called.  The  vowel  is1  either  simply  lengthened,  as  in 
the  participle  legon  for  legonts,  or  a  diphthong  is  pro- 
duced, as  in  titheis  for  tithents.  There  is  a  fair  number 
of  similar  lengthenings  in  Latin  also ;  but  the  Latin 
preserved  the  terminations  from  corruption  more 
carefully  than  the  Greek  ;  therefore  the  compensation 
is  commonly  for  the  loss  of  consonants  in  the  body 
of  a  word,  as  in  cepl  for  c&cipl,  deni  for  dec-ni.  In  these 
languages  the  '  quantity '  of  each  vowel  was  fixed  by 
use :  a  long  vowel  was  not  shortened  arbitrarily,  as  it 
can  be  in  modern  languages ;  quantity  with  us  is  no 
longer  something  fixed  for  all  men's  pronunciation, 


I.]     THE  CONSTANT  CHANGE  IN  LANGUAGE.     37 

which  cannot  be  changed.  This  is  the  reason  why  a 
language  like  French,  which  has  perhaps  undergone 
greater  destruction  of  consonants  than  any  other, 
shows  no  clear  traces  of  compensation.  In  French 
the  ruling  principle  of  utterance  seems  to  be  that  each 
syllable  should  have  very  nearly  the  same  amount  of 
force  and  clearness,  but  quantity  is  not  fixed. 

39.  There  is  another  set  of  changes  in  the  form  of 
words  which  you  will  understand  best  by  a  few 
examples.  In  Old  English  the  perfect  tense  in  most 
verbs  was  formed  by  a  change  of  the  vowel :  the 
reason  of  this  we  shall  see  farther  on.  A  great  many 
of  these  '  strong  perfects '  still  remain  in  common  use, 
as  from  fall  the  perfect  fell,  from  grow  grew,  &c. 
But  a  great  many  perfects  of  this  kind  have  been 
supplanted  by  different  formations  (technically  called 
'  weak '  perfects),  ending  in  d  or  t  (Ch.  V.,  16).  There 
were  perfects  of  this  kind  in  early  English,  ending 
however  in  de,  as  lokede  (looked),  schulde  (should), 
&c. ;  but  these  were  not  so  numerous  as  the  stronger 
forms.  By  degrees  this  method  of  forming  the  perfect 
took  people's  fancy  more  than  the  other  :  and  the  old 
strong  forms  were  superseded  by  weak  ones.  Just  as 
grow  made  grew,  so  in  old  time  row  made  rew  ;  now 
we  say  rowed.  We  use  sowed  from  sow,  not  sew ; 
shaped  from  shape,  not  schop ;  heaved  from  heave,  not 
hove:  and  countless  more  of  the  same  sort,  of  which 
the  older  form  still  appears  in  our  old  literature,  and 
some  few  survive  locally.  Sometimes  in  our  affection 
for  this  new  form,  we  make  monstrosities  by  adding 
it  on  to  the  old  perfect.  Thus  leap  made  for  perfect 
leop,  as  you  may  see  in  "  Piers  the  Plowman  : "  we 
say  leapt  where  we  have  both  the  vowel-change, 
and  also  /  (for  d,  see  §  31)  at  the"  end.  So  the  old 
perfect  of  sleep  was  step,  now  slept ;  of  weep  wep,  now 
wept,  and  uneducated  people  at  the  present  day  often 
use  these  older  and  more  correct  forms.  But  the 
newer  form  of  the  perfect  has  spread  over  the  language, 


38  PRIMER  OF  PHIL OLOGY.  [CHAP. 

and  will  do  more  so ;  others  will  be  coined  after  the 
same  fashion. 

40.  Now  these  new  forms  are  not  in  any  way  easier 
to  pronounce  than  the  old  ones,  but  the  new  habit  of 
making  the  perfect  is  superseding  the  older  habit. 
The  reason  is  not  clear ;  it  may  be  ascribed  to  mental 
indolence,  which  dislikes  preserving  a  variety  of  forms, 
or  to  an  instinctive  seeking  after  order  and  regularity, 
which  prompts  us  to  reduce  apparent  anomalies. 
Changes  of  this  sort  are  commonly  described  as  being 
due  to  analogy,  because  each  new  form  is  made  on 
the  analogy  of  those  which  have  preceded  it.  They 
pass  but  slowly  over  a  language,  but  very  effectively ; 
and  many  of  the  most  obvious  differences  between 
the  ancient  and  modern  language  of  a  country  are  due 
to  them.  I  may  give  an  instance  from  Latin  and  from 
Greek.  In  Latin,  as  is  well-known,  the  conjugations 
of  the  verb  were  divided  by  old  grammarians  accord- 
ing to  the  vowel  which  preceded  the  re  of  the  infini- 
tive: (i)  aware,  (2)  nwnere,  (3)  regere,  (4)  audlre.  This 
is  not  a  very  scientific  division,  but  that  is  not  now 
the  point.  The  verbs  of  the  third  conjugation  are 
certainly  the  oldest  in  the  language,  the  others  being 
derivative  verbs ;  and  in  Latin  they  are  still  the  most 
numerous.  But  in  Italian  the  tendency  has  been  to 
conjugate  all  verbs  as  though  they  were  of  the  0-class, 
though  they  may  still  retain  some  mark  of  their  old 
form.  Thus  cred-t  mus  in  Latin  is  cred-i-d-mo  in  Italian, 
habemus  is  abbi-a-mo,  audlmus  is  audi-d-mo.  Similarly 
in  French  it  is  computed  that  considerably  more  than 
seven-eighths  of  all  the  verbs  belong  to  this  conjuga- 
tion. In  Greek  the  oldest  verb-formation  in  the  lan- 
guage is  the  so-called  'verb  in  mi."  These  verbs 
formed  but  a  small  part  of  the  whole  list  even  in 
classical  times.  In  modern  Greek  they  have  vanished 
altogether,  all  being  conjugated  on  one  model.  Modern 
Greek  nouns  tend  to  make  their  nominative  after  one 
type,  so  that  all  should  end  in  s,  e.g.  pateras  not  pater 


I.]     THE  CONSTANT  CHANGE  IN  LANGUAGE.     39 

(a  father),  geros  not  geron  (an  old  man).  This  is  a 
very  curious  instance  of  retention  of  an  old  principle 
which  had  seemed  to  be  quite  obscured.  The  old 
Greek  forms  ended  in  pre-historic  times  with  s ;  and 
this  s  in  pater-s,  geront-s  having  been  dropped,  the 
vowel  was  lengthened  by  compensation  (§  38).  The 
modern  Greek  has  replaced  the  s.  In  our  own  lan- 
guage there  is  a  noticeable  tendency  to  form  new  verbs 
in  ise,  e.g.,  modernise,  rationalise,  &c.  ;  this  suffix  cor- 
responds to  the  Greek  suffix  -tzo,  and  came  into  English 
through  the  French  -iser  in  a  comparatively  small 
number  of  verbs ;  but  the  list  is  yearly  on  the  in- 
crease. Very  parallel  is  the  German  verb-suffix 
-iren :  when  a  German  wants  to  naturalise  a  foreign 
word  this  suffix  is  repeatedly  employed,  e.g.  constru- 
iren  ;  nay,  even  though  -ise  may  be  there  before,  as 
central-is-iren. 

41.  This  principle  of  analogy  naturally  acts,  as  in 
the  examples  which  we  have  been  considering,  over 
large  classes  of  words.  But  there  are  also  changes 
produced  by  it  in  single  words,  or  in  but  one  or  two. 
Thus  peas  ends  in  j,  because  the  original  final  vowel 
e  has  been  dropped.  Hence  it  came  to  be  regarded 
as  a  plural,  and  a  singular  pea  was  made  for  it.  But 
pease  or  pese  is  the  old  singular  form,  and  one  may 
hear  peasen  from  country-folk  still.  It  is  well  known 
that  the  genitive  its  is  a  late  form  which  does  not 
occur  in  the  Bible,  his  being  used  instead.  The  old 
English  pronoun  of  the  third  person  was  he  (masc.), 
heo  (fern.),  hit  (neut);  hit  was  also  the  neuter  accusa- 
tive ;  so  /  was  only  the  mark  of  the  neuter  in  these 
two  cases,  and  had  no  place  whatever  in  the  genitive 
case.  When  the  initial  h  fell  off,  the  history  of  it 
became  obscure  ;  its  connection  with  he  was  lost ;  and 
as  genitives  were  regularly  formed  by  adding  s,  it  was 
added  here  too.  Both  these  instances,  and  many 
others  which  might  be  given,  show  the  mistaken 
application  of  a  rule  to  cases  for  which  it  was  not 


40  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

made ;    exceptional   forms   are   made   to   follow   the 
usual  analogy. 

42.  The  influence  of  analogy  is  often  seen  in  the  way 
in  which  we  make  our  compound  words.  In  English 
mis  was  prefixed  to  words  to  express  something  bad ; 
it  occurs  as  a  noun  in  our  older  writers,  e.g.  in  the 
story  of  William  the  Werwolf  (man-wolf)  where  we 
have  the  line  (532) : 

"  And  to  meride  my  misse  I  make  my  avowe." 

i.e.  I  make  my  vow  to  mend  my  fault  We  still  trace 
the  noun  in  the  adverb  amiss ;  also  in  compounds 
such  as  misdeed,  mistake ;  and  this  was  the  regular 
English  form  for  the  purpose.  Something  of  the  same 
sort  was  expressed  by  dis  in  Latin,  and  in  the  Norman 
part  of  our  language,  as  in  disturb,  discord,  &c. ;  parting 
in  two  seems  to  have  been  the  primary  notion  of  the 
word.  Now  when  the  English  and  the  Norman  voca- 
bularies coalesced,  it  was  natural  that  Norman  suffixes 
should  sometimes  get  prefixed  to  English  words,  and 
vice  versa;  and  so  instead  of  the  English  mis-like, 
there  sprang  up  the  mongrel  dis-like,  half  Norman, 
half  English ;  and  by  degrees  it  came  to  be  the  rule 
that  all  compounds  of  this  sort  required  dis,  on  the 
analogy  of  those  already  existing.  There  is  a  well 
known  instance  in  which  one  English  prefix  has  driven 
another  out.  We  had  in  old  English  fore  =  before, 
as  Y&  fore-tell ;  and  alsoyfrr,  equivalent  to  German  ver 
(ver-bieten  —for- bid),  and  Latin  per;  the  idea  through 
or  across  has  brought  in  by  implication  the  further  idea 
of  harm  or  evil ;  thus  for-swear  has  the  same  sense  as 
periuro  in  Latin ;  and  for-shapen  could  be  used  in  the 
same  sense  as  mis-shapen.  But  the  history  of  this 
word  was  forgotten  ;  and  compounds  with  fore  in- 
creased, till  by  degrees  for  was  wrongly  spelt  fore  in 
several  words,  whose  etymology  is  thereby  darkened. 
We  talk  of  fore- closing  in  law,  and  to  fore-go  a  thing, 
and  in  each  case  the  false  spelling  suggests  a  false 


I.]     THE  CONSTANT  CHANGE  IN  LANGUAGE.     41 

derivation;  fore-fend  does  not  mean  'strike  before,' 
but  represents  for-fend,  l  strike  across,'  or  l  out  of  the 
way/  '  prevent.'  Note  this  last  word ;  the  English 
prefix  is  combined  with  a  Latin  root ;  which  is  seen 
in  de-fend,  &c. 

43.  These  instances  are  enough  to  show  how  great 
an  effect  this   cleaving   to  a   rule,  through  right  or 
through  wrong,  may  have  on  a  language.     I  have  not 
time  to  point  out  how  much  of  the  same  effect  of 
analogy  upon   the   mind  is   to   be  found   in 
syntax  ;  but  Greek  scholars  may  find  good  traces 
of  it  in   the  history  of  the  genitive  with  the  verb. 
Uniformity  in  accentuation  is  also  produced  in 
this  way;  in  English  we  habitually  throw  back  the 
stress  as  far  from  the  end  of  the  word  as  we  can ; 
and  when  we  adopt   foreign   words,  we   accentuate 
them  at  last  after   some    struggles  in  the  same  way 
(Cp.  Ch.  VIIL,  36).     This  uniformity  is  not  found  in 
older  English,  as  is  obvious  to  anyone  who  will  look 
at  early  rimed  poetry,  e.g.  the  metrical  Northumber- 
land Psalter.     There  in  the  translation  of  the  Eighth 
Psalm,  the  verse  *  Out  of  the  mouth  of  babes  and 
sucklings  hast  thou  ordained  strength,'  appears  as 

"  Of  mouth  of  childer  and  soukand, 
Made  J?ou  lof  (praise)  in  ilka  land." 

where  ' soukand'  corresponds  to  Ma"nd'.  It  was  only 
by  degrees  that  the  analogy  was  established. 

44.  I  shall  mention  but  one  more  result  of  analogy. 
This  is  the  change  not  merely  in  the  suffix  or  prefix 
of  a  word,   but  in    the  whole  word  which  is  often 
caused  by  the  attempt  to  find  some  meaning  in  that 
which  seems  to   have  none.      This  is  strikingly  ex- 
emplified  in    names   of    places.      These    commonly 
contain  the  name  of  some  person ;  and  if  that  proper 
name  go  out  of  common  use,  it  is  almost  certain  that 
the  name  of  the  place  will  be  altered  so  as  to  repre- 
sent some  known  object.    Thus  the  Cumberland  lake, 


42  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

Buttermere,  was  the  mere  of  Buthar,  presumably  one 
of  the  many  Norwegians  of  that  name  who  made 
themselves  homes  in  the  country  at  Butterhill,  Butter- 
gill,  &c.  Clearly  there  is  no  sense  in  the  change ;  no 
meaning  whatever  is  gained  by  it ;  but  *  butter '  was 
a  familiar  word,  the  proper  name  was  unfamiliar; 
hence  the  change.  Just  in  the  same  way,  and  in  the 
same  country,  Bot-haug,  i.e.  Bot's  hill,  became  Boat- 
hill,  Geit's-garth  became  Gate-scarth,  Solvar's-seat 
became  Silverside.  The  Norwegians  became  English- 
men, as  much  as  the  other  invaders  of  England ;  they 
were  absorbed  into  the  greater  body,  and  their  de- 
scendants bore  English  names :  and  the  old  proper 
names  were  forgotten.  Similarly  Lizard  Point  is  said 
to  be  a  corruption  of  Lazar  point,  i.e.  an  out-of-the- 
way  place  for  lepers.  Other  corruptions  of  the  same 
sort  are  well  known ;  how  Dun-y-coed,  the  Keltic 
of  '  hill  the  wood,'  has  become  Dunagoat ;  how  the 
French  '  Chartreux '  has  become  the  Charterhouse ; 
and  even  the  fairly  intelligible  *  Burgh  Walter'  has 
become  Bridgwater. 

45.  Scientific  terms  naturally  suffer  severely  by  this 
method  of  handling.     Gardeners  make  strange  havoc 
of  the  names  of  plants.      I  knew  one  who  always 
called  China  asters,  Chinese  oysters ;  and  the  power 
of  finding  an  analogy  must  have  been  strained  to  the 
uttermost  in  the  man  who  called  chrysanthemums — 
Christy   anthems !      Names   of    diseases   are    pulled 
about  in  the  like  manner  in  country  talk.     In  Sussex 
bronchitis   is  called   the   *  brown  crisis/   and  typhus 
sometimes  passes  into  'titus  fever/     We  saw  above 
how  local  etymology  acts  on  the  names  of  animals 

(§  19). 

46.  I  have  thus  shown  you  the  different  kinds  of 
change  which  are  found  in  the  form  of  words  apart 
from  their  meaning.     I  have  pointed  out  the  general 
heads  to  which  these  changes  may  be  referred,  and 
tried  to  convince  you  that  underlying  the  ceaseless 


II.]    HOW  LANGUAGES  HA  VE  BEEN  FORMED.     43 

variation  of  spoken  languages  there  are  some  perma- 
nent principles  of  general  application.  We  have  seen 
incidentally  that  all  people  are  not  affected  alike  by 
these  principles,  but  that  in  one  language  there  is 
more  substitution,  in  another  more  assimilation ;  in 
one  language  the  consonants  will  be  affected,  in 
another  the  vowels,  and  so  on.  But  in  all  that  we 
have  yet  done  we  have  been  seeing  how  languages 
change  from  some  previously  existing  type.  We  have 
begun  with  the  phenomena  of  language  which  are 
before  our  eyes,  and  tried  to  work  back  to  some  older 
form.  Can  we  now  see  how  that  form  was  itself 
developed  ;  how  language  grew  up  to  a  certain  point, 
not  how  it  has  been  decomposed  therefrom  ? 


CHAPTER  II. 

SOME   OF   THE   WAYS    IN   WHICH    LANGUAGES    HAVE 
BEEN    FORMED. 

i.  BEFORE  a  boy  has  got  very  far  in  his  Latin 
grammar,  he  finds  that  he  must  say  erit — one  word 
only — when  in  English  he  would  say  '  he  shall  be.' 
He  will  learn  that  erit  can  be  traced  back  to  an  older 
form  es-sya-ti  (see  Ch.  V.,  14),  and  that  the  parts  of  that 
word  carried  respectively  the  meanings  *  be-shall-he.' 
But  there  was  never  a  time  in  the  history  of  the  Latin 
language,  nor  indeed  centuries  before  Rome  was 
founded,  when  those  parts  could  be  used  separately. 
Similarly  he  will  find  that  erat  suffices  instead  of  his 
own  two  words  '  he  was ' ;  sit  represents  'he  may  be ; ' 
fuerit  is  equivalent  to  'he  may  have  been/  From 
these  he  will  infer  that  it  is  the  custom  of  the  language 
to  express  by  one  word  modes  of  action  which  we 
express  by  several  distinct  words.  Turning  to  the 
nouns  he  will  find  saxi  when  we  should  say  '  of  a 


44  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

stone '  and  saxo  when  we  should  say  '  to  a  stone '  or 
1  with  a  stone/  He  will  not  be  able  to  learn  exactly 
what  the  final  vowels  of  these  cases  meant  even  in 
the  oldest  and  least  corrupted  form  to  which  they  can 
be  traced  back.  But  he  will  be  at  no  loss  to  recog- 
nise in  them  the  same  principle  at  work  as  in  i  erit ' — 
the  principle  of  tacking  on  to  a  part  of  the 
word,  which  remains  more  or  less  the  same, 
certain  sounds  which  indicate  the  relations 
which  the  noun  or  the  verb  bears  to  some- 
thing else  :  whereas  we  express  these  rela- 
tions by  entire  words  put  before  the  verb  or  noun. 
Further,  if  he  knows  other  ancient  languages,  Greek  or 
Sanskrit,  or  others,  he  will  find  them  agreeing  in  their 
method  with  the  Latin.  He  will  therefore  recognise 
two  very  distinct  principles  of  formation,  and  will 
perhaps  conclude  that  one  distinguishes  ancient  lan- 
guage and  the  other  the  English  language,  perhaps  all 
modern  forms  of  speech. 

2.  This  conclusion  he  will  see  some  reasons  for 
modifying.  He  has  not  to  go  much  further  in  Latin 
before  he  will  find  traces  of  this  seemingly  modern 
method.  He  will  find  amatus  est,  two  distinct  words 
meaning  *  he  was  loved/  If  he  could  carry  his  study 
a  little  onward  into  late  Latin  he  would  be  shocked 
to  find  a  mare  habeo,  (  I  have  to  love/  used  instead  of 
amabo  '  I  shall  love,'  and  his  master  will  tell  him  that 
French,  which  is  only  a  modernised  form  of  Latin,  has 
joined  together  this  a  mare  habeo  into  the  single  word 
aimerai  (see  Ch.  V.,  7).  It  is  true  that  there  was  a 
time  wheny  'at  aimer  was  used  with  the  words  distinct, 
and  at  is  not  altered  in  form  in  the  compound  any 
more  than  if  we  wrote  '  I-to-love-have '  in  English.  But 
no  Frenchman  now  thinks  that  at  means  'have'  when 
in  this  connection ;  it  is  to  him  simply  a  symbol  of 
future  time.  Even  this  clearness  of  form  is  lost  in 
Italian,  another  derived  form  of  Latin,  which  has 
mixed  up  amaro  out  of  amare  ho,  and  in  Spanish 


ii.]    HOW  LANGUAGES  HAVE  BEEN  FORMED.     45 

amare  —  amar  he.  Therefore  in  these  forms,  consi- 
dered as  a  whole,  he  will  see  a  return  to  the  old 
process  of  amalgamation,  and  that  of  such  a  kind  that 
the  new  elements  convey  no  meaning  in  themselves, 
whatever  the  meaning  may  be  which  they  once  had  ; 
they  have  become  grammatical  signs,  the  reason  of 
which  has  to  be  taken  for  granted  in  learning  these 
languages.  Again  passing  from  these  continental  lan- 
guages to  his  own,  he  will  remember  that  there  too 
he  can  speak  of  '  a  stone's  throw '  as  well  as  '  a  throw 
of  a  stone,'  and  that  'stonesthrow'  can  even  be  written 
as  one  word  expressing  a  new  idea,  a  vague  measure 
of  distance.  So  he  will  perceive  that  there  is  no  fast 
line  separating  these  two  kinds  of  usage,  that  people 
can  pass  from  the  one  form  to  the  other  in  the  course 
of  time,  and  back  again.  But  he  will  recognise  two 
important  tendencies,  and  will  see  that  the  one  leads 
men  to  run  the  sounds  which  express  the  component 
parts  of  one  idea  into  one  word  :  and  languages  of 
which  this  is  the  prevailing  characteristic  are  called 
synthetic,  that  is,  amalgamating  languages.  The 
other  tendency  is  to  express  the  idea  by  different 
words  each  with  a  separate  meaning  :  and  this  gives 
to  languages  like  our  own  the  title  analytic,  i.e. 
resolving  and  separating  languages,  even  though  the 
synthetic  process  be  not  unknown  in  them. 

3.  Languages  may  be  found  spoken  at  this  day  on 
the  earth  far  more  synthetic  than  Latin.  Such  is  the 
Turkish,  which  from  the  root  sev  (=  love)  can  make 
the  verb  sev-mek  to  love,  and  from  that  sev-in-mek  to 
'rejoice,  and  the  causal  of  that  sev-in-dir-mek  to  cause 
to  rejoice,  and  the  passive  of  that  sev-in-dir-il-mek  to 
be  made  to  rejoice.  Here  it  will  be  observed  that  in 
all  these  verbs  sev  always  stands  first  and  mek  last, 
the  new  sound  being  bottled  up,  as  it  were,  between 
the  two ;  this  is  a  variety  of  the  principle  not  to  be 
found  in  Latin  or  other  languages  akin  to  it,  at  least 
in  historic  times.  The  same  principle  of  incor- 


46  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

porating  a  new  element  into  the  middle  of  a  word  is 
to  be  seen  even  in  Accadian,  in  which,  e.g.,  in-zig 
together  meant  '  he  built,'  but  inninzig  meant  '  he 
it  built,'  and  the  whole  combination  makes  but  one 
word.  This  Accadian  language  has  been  recently 
discovered,  written  in  the  cuneiform  or  wedge  shaped 
characters,  which  you  know  if  you  have  seen  the 
Assyrian  lions  at  the  British  Museum  ;  it  is  the  lan- 
guage of  the  old  Chaldees,  and  has  been  interpreted 
by  the  help  of  the  bilingual  inscriptions  of  the  Assyrian 
kings,  in  which  both  Accadian  and  Assyrian  characters 
are  used.  As  Accadian  is  by  far  the  oldest  form  of 
the  languages  of  that  family  of  which  Turkish  is  the 
best  known  type,  its  importance  is  of  the  same  kind 
as  that  of  Sanskrit  (see  Ch.  III.,  3). 

4.  But  languages  formed  in  this  incorporating  way 
do  not  always  preserve  their  elements  distinct;  this 
is  the  case  with  the  languages  of  North  America,  in 
which  ideas,  the  simplest  as  it  appears  to  us,  are  ex- 
pressed in  compounds  of  direful  length,  the  parts  of 
which  cannot  be  recovered  and  used  again,  as  they 
can  in  Turkish  or  Accadian.     The  same  is  true  of 
that   curious  language — the  Basque — spoken   in  the 
south-west  of  France  and  the  north  coast  of  Spain. 
Here   however   the  words  are   not   inconvenient   in 
length.     But  they  are  joined  together  so  that  the  two 
parts  are  not  clearly  recognisable  in  the  compound. 
Thus  bel-haun,  a  knee,  is  said  to  be  compounded  of 
belhar  (front)  and  oin  (leg). 

5.  This   brings   us   to  an  important  point  in  the 
history  of  synthetic  languages.     In  them  the  words 
may  be  joined  together  with  different  degrees 
of  fixity.     Thus  it  is  possible  to  join  words  together 
so  that  every  part  can  be  used  again  separately.     The 
Chinese  and  the  languages  spoken  in  the  south-eastern 
corner  of  Asia,  Annam,  Siam,  Burmah,  &c.,  are  of  this 
sort.     Thus,  for  example,  a  plural  can  be  formed  by 
adding  to  the  singular  some  word  meaning  *  multitude/ 


IL]    HO IV  LANGUAGES  HA  VE  BEEN  FORMED.     47 

4  company/  or  the  like  ;  much  as  with  us  '  mankind  ' 
can  be  used  in  a  plural  sense  though  it  is  singular  in 
form ;  but  it  is  true  that  its  use  is  chiefly  to  denote  all 
men  as  one  single  class.  We,  on  the  contrary,  should 
use  for  this  purpose  inflections,  like  es  or  en  spoken  of 
above,  syllables  which  have  lost  their  meaning  and 
are  not  felt  to  be  anything  but  grammatical  forms ; 
they  have  been  sanctioned  by  long  use  and  their 
original  meaning  is  quite  unimportant.  But  it  would 
seem  that  even  Chinese  is  deserting  its  classical 
methods,  and  tending  to  inflections.  Thus  wo  means 
4 I/  wo-chae  means  '  we : '  this  chae  was  originally  a 
'  class '  or  '  company/  but  now  is  not  used  separately ; 
it  is  merely  a  sign  of  plurality.  But  this  change  has 
not  yet  spread  far  over  Chinese.  Languages  of  this 
kind  are  generally  called  monosyllabic,  because 
each  of  these  independent  words  in  Chinese  consists 
of  one  syllable  only;  but  a  better  term  is  isolating, 
which  expresses  the  completeness  of  each  of  the 
elements  of  such  a  speech. 

6.  It  is  curious  to  see  how  few  of  such  units  are 
necessary ;  there  are  less  than  five  hundred  in  all  in 
Chinese,  but  they  are  eked  out  by  difference  of  tone 
in  pronunciation  :  the  same  sound  represents  different 
parts  of  speech  (connected  with  the  same  general  idea) 
according  as  it  is  spoken  in  a  high  or  a  low,  a  rising 
or  a  falling  tone.  You  may  see  what  I  mean  by 
difference  of  tone  from  the  change  in  English  if  you 
say,  '  John,  who  is  here/  as  a  statement  of  a  fact,  and 
*  John  !  who  is  here  ? '  as  a  vocative  followed  by  a 
question;  in  the  second  case  'who'  is  pronounced 
with  a  rising  tone,  and  'John'  generally  with  a  rise 
and  fall  of  the  tone  on  the  same  syllable ;  in  the  first 
sentence  the  tone  is  uniform  till  the  last  word,  then  it 
falls  by  the  almost  invariable  English  practice.  There 
is  no  rule  in  English  fixing  this  variation  of  tone ;  it  is 
only  a  common  use.  But  you  may  see  from  it  that  it 
would  be  easy  to  lay  down  rules  of  the  sort,  so  that 
4*  5 


48  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

the  same  sound  should  have  different  meanings  accord- 
ing to  its  tone ;  and  in  this  way  the  Chinese  manages 
to  be  perfectly  intelligible.  Indeed  the  evils  of 
representing  different  ideas  by  the  same  sound  are 
greater  in  appearance  than  in  practice ;  the  context 
generally  determines  with  sufficient  clearness  what  is 
the  meaning  in  each  case.  It  is  possible  to  make 
sentences  in  English  where  the  same  sound  shall 
denote  a  verb,  a  substantive,  and  an  adjective.  Nay 
more,  you  may  even  repeat  some  of  these  in  slightly 
different  senses,  without  any  danger  of  confusion. 
Thus  I  might  ask  you  '  could  you  bear  (endure)  that 
a  man  for  a  bare  (mere)  living  should  bear  a  bear  on 
his  bare  back  ? '  Of  course  in  writing  '  bare '  and 
'  bear '  are  distinguished,  but  we  are  talking  now  of 
spoken,  not  of  written,  language.  To  those  who  speak 
it  Chinese  is  quite  as  intelligible  as  English  to  English- 
men. We  should  wonder,  not  so  much  at  the  ap- 
plicability of  their  few  sounds  to  language,  as  at  the 
extraordinary  permanence  with  which  this  system  has 
remained  for  centuries  nearly  unchanged,  as  the  speech 
of  a  highly  civilised  though  unprogressive  people. 

7.  But  we  have  seen  that  even  in  China  there  are 
signs  of  change  in  the  form  of  speech.  Some  words 
like  '  chae '  were  becoming  no  longer  independent, 
but  only  capable  of  being  used  in  combination  with 
others,  to  express  change  of  idea,  but  not  a  new  one. 
Now  if  all  the  words  by  which  gender,  number,  person, 
&c.  are  expressed  in  Chinese  had  gone  the  way  of 
chae,  what  would  have  been  the  result?  We  should 
find  some  monosyllabic  words,  complete  in  them- 
selves; but  far  more  dissyllabic  words,  in  which  the 
first  part  is  unchanged  in  form,  and  expresses  always 
the  same  idea ;  while  the  termination  will  be  in  every 
case  only  a  subordinate  element,  capable  of  being  put 
on  and  removed  at  pleasure.  For  example,  while  the 
first  part  of  the  word  means  *  standing,'  '  going/ 
'greatness/  'brightness/  or  the  like,  the  movable  parts 


II. ]    HOW  LANG UA GES  HA  VE  BEEN  FORMED.     49 

add  the  idea  of  some  person  'going,'  or  the  particular 
form  of  '  greatness ; '  and  the  whole  word  expresses 
*  I  stand,'  or  '  he  stands  ; '  '  a  great  thing,'  the  '  being 
great,'  l  causing  greatness,'  &c.  But  these  last  parts 
of  the  word  cannot  be  used  by  themselves  to  mean 
anything ;  in  fact,  they  will  be  like  our  syllable  '-ness/ 
which  expresses  a  quality  when  combined  with  'great ' 
or  '  bright,'  but  no  longer  means  anything  by  itself. 
This  second  syllable  might  then  suffer 
change  so  much  as  to  be  no  longer  recognisable; 
just  as  (to  return  again  to  our  own  language)  in  man- 
hood and  godhead  we  no  longer  recognise  the  original 
English  word  had,  a  state  or  condition.  But  the 
first  part  of  the  word  remains  unchanged, 
as  much  as  great  in  greatness,  or  man  in  manhood. 

8.  This  supposed  case  is  quite  true;  there  are  a 
great  many  languages  of  this  type;  the  languages 
of  the  nomad  tribes  which  cover  the  wide  steppes 
of  Central  Asia,  or  border  on  the  North  Sea,  whether 
in  Asia  or  in  Lapland  and  Finland ;  and  of  many 
more  isolated  races  in  the  south  of  Asia,  in  Ceylon 
and  Southern  India,  in  Tibet,  Siam,  Malacca,  and  the 
islands  of  the  Pacific;  and  in  southern  and  eastern 
Europe  the  language  of  the  Magyars  of  Hungary, 
of  the  Osmanli  Turks,  and  of  the  mass  of  the 
tribes  which  in  Asia  and  south-eastern  Europe  make 
up  the  great  Russian  empire.  These  languages  are  not 
closely  connected  as  a  whole ;  in  fact  they  break  up 
into  distinct  groups,  which  geographically  at  least  are 
unconnected;  thus  the  speech  of  the  Hungarians  falls 
into  the  same  group  as  that  of  the  Finns ;  while 
Turkish  has  its  nearest  relation  among  the  Kirghis 
tribes  and  the  Yakuts.  But  they  all  agree  in  this 
principle,  that  they  keep  the  essential  part  of  each 
word,  the  root,  uncorrupted  ;  whilst  the  other  syllables 
may  suffer  more  or  less  of  change  ;  and  since  these 
syllables  can  be  added  to  or  taken  from  the  unchange- 
able core  of  the  word,  the  languages  are  called 


50  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

agglutinative,  that  is,  the  languages  which  'glue*  or 
join  on  their  varying  to  their  permanent  elements. 
The  great  mass  of  the  tribes  which  speak  these  lan- 
guages are  nomad  tribes,  which  have  never  been 
formed  into  a  lasting  political  whole,  and  have  de- 
veloped no  literature ;  and  it  has  been  suggested  that 
the  character  of  their  languages  is  the  result  of  the 
life  of  those  who  speak  them.  Languages  which  have 
no  literature  are  liable  to  change  fast  and  become 
unintelligible ;  but  among  scattered  peoples  intelligi- 
bility is  essential  if  the  intercourse  among  them,  small 
though  it  may  be,  is  to  be  maintained  at  all.  It  was 
therefore  important  to  keep  the  radical  portion  of 
each  word  intact;  to  allow  variation  in  the  syllables 
which  expressed  relation  only,  but  no  variety  in  that 
which  expressed  the  idea  itself. 

9.  The  peoples  which  speak  the  languages  of  this 
kind  are  sometimes  called  by  common  names  in  con- 
sequence; the  commonest  title  is  Turanian.     But 
such  names  are  better  avoided,  where   there   is  no 
probable  connection  in  race  between  the  peoples  so 
comprehended.  The  agglutinative  languages  are  much 
too  different  to  give  any  ground  at  all  for  believing 
that  they  all  belong  to  the  same  family.     They  agree, 
as   has   been   said,   only  in  the  general  principle  of 
forming  their  speech ;  but  no  common  bond  has  yet 
been  found  to  bring  together  the  main  groups  of  the 
so-called  Turanian  peoples ;  and  it  is  not  likely  that 
there  is  any. 

10.  Next  suppose  that  an  agglutinative   language 
should  cease  to  keep  distinct  the  radical  and  the  for- 
mative parts  of  its  words.     Suppose  that  it  should 
allow  of  some  of  the  letters  of  the  root  to  drop  away, 
or  let  the  last  letter  of  the  root  run  together  with  the 
first  letter  of  the  suffix,  so  that  the  two  are  no  longer 
distinguishable.     If  this  happen,  the  whole  character 
of  the  language  is  changed.     The  root  and  the 
suffix  have  commonly  coalesced,  so  that  the 


II.  1    HO  W  LANGUA  GES  HA  VE  BEEN  FORMED.     5 1 

history  of  the  word  may  be  no  longer  capable  of  being 
seen  immediately.  In  an  agglutinative  language  you 
would  be  able  to  tell  the  meaning  of  the  word  (even 
though  you  had  never  heard  it  before)  by  piecing  to- 
gether the  idea  out  of  the  different  parts  which  you 
knew.  But  this  you  could  do  no  more.  No  part  of 
the  word  would  of  necessity  suggest  a  meaning  to 
you ;  you  would  need  to  be  familiar  beforehand  with 
the  whole  word,  either  by  ordinary  use  or  by  having 
learnt  it  from  a  grammar.  It  is  probable  that  the 
words  in  this  new  state  will  be  lighter  and  easier  to 
pronounce;  but  they  will  not  be  so  clear  in  them- 
selves. Now  this  is  the  stage  which  all  the  European 
languages  (save  the  Basque  and  those  of  the  Mag- 
yars, £c.,  already  mentioned)  have  reached.  1  o 
this  group,  therefore,  belong  our  own  language  and 
all  those,  whether  ancient  or  modern,  about  which  we 
are  most  likely  to  know  something — Latin,  or  Greek, 
German,  French,  Spanish,  or  Italian.  This  class  of 
languages  is  commonly  called  inflectional,  which 
term  distinguishes  them  from  the  agglutinative  class, 
by  expressing  that  the  formative  part  of  the  word  has 
lost  all  character  of  its  own — which  it  need  not  do  in 
an  agglutinative  language — and  become  a  mere  gram- 
matical inflection.  But  the  term  does  not  fully  express 
the  complete  amalgamation  of  the  different  parts  of 
the  word — the  incapability  of  the  radical  part  to  exist 
by  itself  as  a  mere  root,  without  the  formative  suffix, 
just  as  much  as  the  helplessness  of  the  suffix  without 
the  root.  This  is  the  essential  difference  of  the  two 
types  of  language ;  and  for  this  purpose  amalga- 
mating would  be  a  better  name. 

ii.  I  have  thus  tried  to  show  you  three  different 
types  of  language.  But  you  must  not  suppose  that 
any  one  language  is  so  absolutely  '  isolating ',  '  agglu- 
tinative,' or  l  amalgamating/  as  to  exclude  all  traces 
of  the  other  methods.  We  have  seen  that  in  Chinese 
there  are  forms  which  are  at  least  agglutinative ;  nay, 


52  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

in  the  strict  sense  of  the  word,  they  are  even  *  inflec- 
tional.' In  the  agglutinative  Turkish,  the  suffixes  are 
liable  to  corruption  and  loss  of  absolute  identity  \  and 
this  is  seen  even  in  Accadian,  the  oldest  known  form 
of  the  same  type.  Now,  when  this  has  taken  place, 
we  are  on  the  high  road  to  amalgamation ;  and  this, 
we  saw,  has  come  to  pass  in  the  American  languages, 
both  Indian  and  Mexican,  and  in  the  European 
Basque.  These  languages,  nevertheless,  must  be  in- 
cluded under  the  '  agglutinative '  type ;  they  do  not 
amalgamate  so  far  that  the  separate  parts  of  the 
compound  are  irrecoverable  for  separate  use.  Again, 
Finnish,  an  agglutinative  language,  has  yet  undeniable 
cases  of  nouns — indeed,  far  more  than  any  of  the 
typical  European  languages;  and  in  the  formation  of 
some  of  these  the  root-form  has  suffered  just  as  much 
as  if  the  language  were  amalgamating. 

12.  Once  more,  in  an  inflectional  language,  such  as 
English,  you  may  find  long  compounds  which  really 
show  all  the  types  of  formation.  The  word  ' truth* 
is  formed  by  the  suffix  th  from  a  root,  the  ultimate 
form  of  which  is  uncertain  ;  in  Icelandic  there  was  an 
adjective  tryggr  (see  Ch.  I.,  10)  and  in  Gothic  a  similar 
form  triggws;  and  these,  together  with  the  old  English 
form  of  the  verb  trow,  point  to  a  guttural  as  being 
part  of  the  root ;  but  this  is  uncertain  ;  anyhow  the 
root  is  obscured ;  the  suffix  too  means  nothing  by  itself; 
and  we  have  an  'amalgamating'  compound.  But 
untruth  is  a  compound  of  another  kind ;  the  first 
syllable  has  no  meaning  by  itself  and  is  never  used 
alone ;  traditionally  it  means  no  in  composition  only ; 
but  take  it  away  and  truth  remains  a  perfect  word, 
as  unaffected  by  the  loss  as  a  Turkish  root.  Next, 
untruth-ful  is  just  like  a  Chinese  word ;  you  can 
separate  the  two  words  and  each  retains  its  meaning 
entire ;  no  doubt  ful  seems  to  have  lost  an  '  // '  but 
it  is  really  the  old  form,  to  which  a  second  /  was 
wrongly  added,  because  it  was  found  in  the  cases  now 


II.]    HOW  LANGUAGES  HAVE  BEEN  FORMED.     53 

disused  (genitive  tnithfulles,  &c.);  and  therefore  it  was 
tacked  on  to  the  nominative  also.  You  can  make  yet 
other  derivatives  or  compounds  of  various  kinds  ;  such 
as  untruth-fiil-ly,  where  we  know  from  history  that  ly  is 
for  *  like/  and  each  of  us  has  some  consciousness  of 
the  fact  when  we  make  the  compound.  But  in 
untruth-ful-ness,  though  we  mean  a  condition  of  mind 
and  know  that  we  mean  it,  yet  we  are  not  now  con- 
scious at  all  why  ness  should  express  it ;  we  only 
know  that  it  does  so  in  practice.  We  have  here  then 
cases  of  older  and  younger  agglutination.  We  quite 
forget  what  ness  meant,  we  dimly  remember  what  ly 
meant,  we  know  quite  well  what  ful  means ;  the 
difference  between  the  three  kinds  of  formation  is 
only  a  matter  of  time.  And  we  infer  that  this  will  be 
true  of  languages  as  a  whole;  that  there  will  be  no 
impassable  boundary  between  one  type  and 
another ;  that  one  will  gradually  pass  into  another, 
unless  prevented  by  sufficiently  powerful  reasons,  such 
as  the  nomad  life  of  the  Tartar,  or  the  singular  con- 
servatism of  the  Chinese.  But  any  language  at 
any  given  moment  may  be  rightly  said  to 
belong  to  one  of  these  types,  because  that 
type  represents  the  prevalent  tendency  of 
trie  language  ;  though  it  may  at  the  very  same  time 
show  traces  of  one  or  more  of  the  others. 

13.  I  cannot  speak  further  of  the  languages  of  the 
older  types,  important  and  interesting  though  they  be 
to  a  student  of  language  ;  the  slight  reference  which 
I  have  made  to  some  of  the  most  striking  of  them 
must  suffice.  I  now  proceed  to  enumerate  the  lan- 
guages which  we  call  inflectional.  They  are  spoken 
by  nations  who  have  done  more  for  the  development 
of  the  world  than  any  other  people ;  and  it  is  with 
some  of  them  that  we  are  constantly  brought  into 
contact. 


PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 


CHAPTER  III. 

THE    PRINCIPAL    LANGUAGES   OF   THE   AMALGAMATING 
TYPE. 

1.  THE  first  group  of  languages  of  this  type  is  called 
Semitic,  from  Shem,  the  son  of  Noah,  described  in 
the  Bible  as  the  ancestor  of  some  of  the  peoples  by 
whom  it  is  spoken.     Its  most  important  divisions  are 
the  Syriac,  with  the  extinct  Assyrian  and  Babylonian ; 
the   Hebrew  and  Phoenician ;  and  lastly,  the  Arabic 
and  some  Abyssinian  languages.     The  Hebrew  and 
Arabic  have  made  important  contributions  to  the  re- 
ligious history  of  the  world  in  the  records  of  the  Jewish 
and  Mohammedan  religions.     The  Semitic  languages 
are  remarkable  because  of  their  curious  triliteral  roots, 
that  is,  roots  consisting  of  three  consonants,  which 
remain    unchanged   in   all   relations ;   such   relations 
being  expressed  by  change  of  the  vowels  only.     This 
permanence  of  the  root  form   is  as  great  as  in  the 
agglutinative  languages ;  but  it  is  much  more  difficult 
to  explain.    It  seems  rather  to  belong  to  some  artificial 
cypher  than  to  languages   in  actual  daily  use.     But 
whatever  the  explanation  be,  the  fact  is  there. 

2.  The  second  great  group  of  amalgamating  lan- 
guages is  called  Indo-European  ;  it  is  spread  over 
a    much    larger,   and   now  a   more  important,   area 
than  the  Semitic.     In  England,  Holland,    Denmark, 
Germany,  and  Scandinavia ;    in  France,  Spain,  Por- 
tugal,  Italy,  and  Wallachia;    among    the    numerous 
Sclavonic  peoples,  including  the  greater  part  of  Russia 
in  Europe;  in  Greece  and  Albania;  in  Persia,  Bokhara, 
and  Armenia;  and  lastly,  in  the  great  peninsula  of 
India,  are  still  spoken  the  numerous  languages  which 
can  be  proved  to  be  the  descendants  of  a  smaller 
group  of  languages  certainly  related,  but  now  extinct ; 


in.]  LANGUAGES  OF  AMALGAMATING  TYPE.      55 

all  of  which  again  point  to  one  common 
speech,  and  can  be  explained  in  no  other 
way  but  as  the  daughters  of  a  single  parent- 
language.  This  original  language,  with  its  different 
descendants,  is  called  variously  Indo-European,  Indo- 
Germanic,  and  Aryan ;  the  first  name  aims  at  giving 
an  idea  of  the  country  covered  by  these  languages, 
and  is  fairly  correct,  but  rather  cumbrous ;  the  second 
title  is  much  used  in  Germany,  and  is  clearly  insuffi- 
cient ;  the  last  is  inaccurate,  for  it  is  applicable  to  the 
Asiatic  branch  of  these  languages,  but  to  no  others ; 
yet  its  convenience  has  made  it  popular  in  England, 
where  it  will  doubtless  outlive  the  others.  The  ex- 
tinct languages  which,  when  compared  together,  caused 
the  discovery  of  this  long-perished  Indo-European 
language,  do  not  exactly  correspond  to  the  political 
divisions  above  mentioned ;  some  of  them  have  left 
descendants,  which  are  now  spoken  by  the  sub- 
jects of  wider  empires,  where  other  languages  are 
dominant. 

3.  First  comes  the  Sanskrit  or  old  Indian ;  this 
language  has  an  especial  value,  because  its  roots  and 
suffixes,  and,  generally,  the  principles  on  which  its 
words  are  formed,  are  more  easily  discernible  than  in 
any  other  language  of  the  family :  indeed  it  was  the 
discovery  of  this  language  which  first  made  clear  the 
existence  of  such  a  family  :  the  other  members  of 
which  showed  much  more  blurred  copies  of  the  origi- 
nally common  system.  In  this  language  there  exist 
epics,  plays,  and  philosophical  works  of  great  value  for 
the  history  of  human  thought.  But  for  philology  the 
most  important  relic  is  a  large  collection  of  hymns 
(called  collectively  the  Vedas)  ;  though  their  age  is  not 
certainly  known,  they  are  undoubtedly  older  than  any 
other  literature  of  the  Indo-European  race  :  and  they 
are  equally  valuable  to  the  student  of  religions  as  to 
the  student  of  language  ;  to  whom  they  present  an 
older  form  of  the  language,  differing  from  classical 


56  PRIMER  OF  PHIL OLOGY.  [CHAP. 

Sanskrit  as  much  as  the  English  of  Chaucer  from  the 
English  of  the  present  day. 

4.  Next  conies  the  old  Persian  or  Zend,  which  can 
also  be  traced  through  a  considerable  history.     It  is 
found,  like  Sanskrit,  in  its  oldest  form  in  the  Gathas, 
hymns  of  a  great  but  uncertain  age,  which  form  the 
oldest  literature   of  the   fire   worshippers  of  Persia. 
This  collection  (with  additions)  is  called  the  Zend- 
avesta.    In  a  modified  form  this  language  was  found  on 
the  rocks  of  Behistun  and  in  the  ruins  of  Persepolis : 
the  inscriptions  described  the  deeds  of  the  Achaemeni- 
dean   kings,  of  Darius  and  of  Xerxes.     The  cunei- 
form characters  seem  to  have  been  borrowed  from  the 
Assyrians  (a  Semitic  race)  who  themselves  borrowed 
them  from  the  alien  Accadians.     A  later  form,  Pehlevi, 
is  found  on  the  coins  of  the-  Sassanidae  in  the  third 
and  following  centuries  A.D.,  with  many  Semitic  words 
introduced.      The    Parsi,   which    differs    little    from 
modern  Persian  (except  in  its  freedom  from  the  Arabic 
words  which  the  creed  of  Mohammed  has  brought  into 
Persia)  is  the  language  of  the  great  Persian  epic  the 
'Shahnameh,'  which  dates  from  about  1000  A.D.    The 
importance   of  the   Zend   for   a  philologist    consists 
chiefly  in  its  close  original  agreement  with  the  Sanskrit, 
and  the  light  which  is  therefore  sometimes  thrown  on 
dark  places  of  the  better  known  language. 

5.  These  two  languages  are  sometimes  classed  to- 
gether as  forming  the  Asiatic  divisions  of  the  whole 
family.     They  are  distinguished  from  the  European 
languages  by  some  well-defined  phonetic  differences. 

6.  The    Greek,  with   its   different   dialects,   may 
come  first  of  these.     This  language  has  developed  the 
common  inheritance  of  words  and  forms  with  more 
individuality  than  any  other.     In  general,  as  we  saw, 
it  is  distinguished  by  its  elaborate  vowel  system  and 
by  its  comparative  neglect  of  consonants. 

7.  Next  comes  the  Latin,  which  with  the  cognate 
languages  of  ancient  Italy,  may  be  traced  with  great 


in.]  LANGUAGES  OF  AMALGAMATING  TYPE.      57 

accuracy,  as  it  passes  into  its  modern  forms,  the 
French,  Italian,  Spanish  and  Portuguese,  the  extinct 
Provencal,  and  the  less  known,  though  not  less  im- 
portant to  the  philologist,  languages  of  the  Grisons 
and  Wallachia,  planted  there  by  the  Roman  military 
colonies. 

On  the  importance  of  these  two  languages  there  is 
no  need  to  dwell.  Suffice  it  that  in  them  we  may 
read  the  highest  development  of  ancient  thought  and 
law. 

8.  With  them  is  sometimes  combined,  in  a  South 
European  group,  the  Keltic,  divided  into  (i)  the 
Kymric,  still  spoken  in  Wales,  extinct  as  a  spoken  lan- 
guage in  Cornwall,  and  lingering  in  Brittany;  and  (2) 
the  Gadhelic,  known  as  the  Erse  in  Ireland,  the  Gaelic 
of  the  Scotch  Highlands,  and  the  Manx  of  the  Isle  of 
Man.  All  these  six  varieties  differ  as  dialects  of  the 
two  main  divisions — which  in  their  turn  differ  some- 
what as  Latin  differs  from  Greek.  They  are  or  have 
been  spoken  by  people  who  are  politically  incorporated 
with  other  races  speaking  very  different  tongues.  They 
are  separated  from  each  other,  being  spoken  in  different 
areas  with  no  direct  communication ;  and  mi^ht  have 
been  expected  to  become  extinct  long  ago.  The  Irish 
may  be  partly  maintained  as  the  language  of  a  people 
differing  in  thought  and  feeling  from  their  English  rulers. 
But  even  the  Welsh  and  the  Gaelic  recede  but  slowly ; 
it  is  not  impossible  even  now  to  find  people  in  Wales 
and  the  Highlands  who  can  speak  no  English,  though 
it  is  regularly  taught  in  elementary  schools ;  and  in 
Wales,  newspapers  are  published  in  the  WTelsh  lan- 
guage, which  is  further  fostered  by  prizes  at  annual 
meetings,  and  more  effectually  by  being  used  in  the 
Church  Service  at  least  once  on  each  Sunday  in  the 
mountainous  .parts  of  the  country.  These  and  other 
causes  may  delay  the  end,  which  must,  however,  come 
at  last ;  and  the  philologist  must  be  thankful  for  the 
respite. 


58  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

9.  It   is   maintained   by   some   scholars   that   the 
Keltic  is  more  nearly  akin  to  the  Latin  than  to  any 
other  of  the  large  European  groups  of  language.    This 
is  likely,  but  the  proof  is  insufficient,  and  depends  on 
evidence  too  minute  to  be  brought  forward  here.     If 
the  fact  is  so,  it  helps  to  explain   why  the  Keltic 
tribes   of  Gaul   and   Britain  became   so   completely 
Romanised. 

10.  The  remaining  languages  of  the  Indo-European 
class   form  what  is   called    the   North   European 
group.     In  this  are  comprised 

11.  The  Lithuanian,  a  language  now  spoken  in 
different  forms  only  in  some  of  the  Baltic  provinces  of 
Russia  and  Prussia.     It  is  important  to  the  student  of 
language  because  it  has  preserved  its  inflections  with 
singular  fidelity  down  to  very  recent  times.     Not  only 
are   the  verb   suffixes  wonderfully  perfect,  but  it  has 
also  preserved  regularly  forms  which  are  otherwise  not 
found,  or  only  as  exceptions,  in  any  European  language 
ancient  or  modern.     But  like  the  Kelts,  the  speakers 
of  this  language  have  ceased  to  form  an  independent 
nationality. 

12.  The  Sclavonic  is  spoken  in  different  forms 
in  Russia,  in  Bulgaria,  in  Servia,  and  in  Styria,  Croatia, 
and  the  small  adjoining  provinces,  under  the  general 
name   of    Servian,    in    what    once   was    Poland,    in 
Bohemia,  and  in  some  other  unimportant  districts. 
The  Servian  had,  and  now  has,  some  literature ;  so 
also  the  Bohemian.     But  to  the  philologist  the  chief 
interest  lies  in  the  *  Church-Sclavonic,'  the  old  Bul- 
garian speech  into  which  the  Bible  was  translated  in 
the  ninth  century.     From  it  we  find  that  Sclavonic, 
with  the  Lithuanian,  lies  nearest  to  the  last,  and  for 
us  the  most  important  group  of  the  series. 

13.  This  is  the  Teutonic.     It  includes  : — 

(i)  The  High  German  with  its  different  steps 
from  the  eighth  century  down  to  the  present  time,  at 
which  it  has  become  the  common  language  of  the 


in.]   LANGUAGES  OF  AMALGAMATING  TYPE.      59 

South  Germans,  and  the  literary  language  of  the 
entire  empire;  this  is  due  to  its  having  been  the 
speech  of  Luther,  into  which  he  translated  the  Bible. 

(2)  Under  this  same  head  fall  the  Scandinavian 
languages,  spoken  in  Sweden,  Denmark,  Norway,  and 
Iceland.     Iceland  was  colonised  by  the  Norwegians 
in  the  ninth  century,  and  there,  the    Norwegian    or 
Norse   tongue  was  established.      Its   fate  there  has 
been  almost  unique  in  the  history  of  language ;  for 
in  its  isolation    it    has   remained  nearly   unchanged 
down  to  the  present  day,  as  can  be  seen  in  the  so- 
called  Eddas  which  preserve  traditions  of  the  tenth 
century,  rude  epic  narratives  of  the  exploits  of  Scan- 
dinavian gods  and  heroes ;  their  popularity  has  doubt- 
less contributed  much  to  the  fixity  of  the  language. 
In   the   present   day  the    language    of   Norway   and 
Denmark  is  practically  one  \  that  of  Sweden  differs 
slightly.       The    present    annexation    of    Norway   to 
Sweden  instead  of  to  Denmark  is  therefore  the  union 
of  like  to  unlike. 

(3)  The  third   great   division   of  the   Teutonic  is 
called  Low  German  because  spoken  as  the  ordinary 
language  of  every  day  in  the  lands  which  lie  toward 
the    German  Ocean  and  the  Baltic.      The  form   in 
which  it  has  been  preserved  longest  is  the  Gothic, 
spoken  in  the  province  (once  Roman)  of  Dacia ;  the 
Bible   was   translated   into   it   by   Ulfilas,   a   Gothic 
bishop,  in  the  fourth  century;   and  fragments  con- 
taining the  greater  part  of  the  New  Testament  have 
been  preserved  ;  in  this  we  naturally  find,  for  the  most 
part,  the  oldest  traceable  forms  of  Teutonic  speech. 
No  direct  descendant  of  Gothic  survives  to  our  day. 
But  all  the  other  languages  of  this  division  have  their 
modern  counterparts ;  the  Old  Frisian,  which  is  still 
spoken  in  a  modern  form  in  Sleswick,  in  Holstein, 
and  on  the  coast  westward  to  the  Weser;  the  old  Saxon, 
in  which  was  written   the  '  Heliand,'  a  verse   para- 
phrase of  the  Gospel  narrative,  originally  spoken  on 

6 


6o 


PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY. 


[CHAP. 


the  Ems  and  the  Weser,  now  represented  by  the  Platt 
Deutsch ;  the  Dutch,  and  the  Flemish,  of  Holland 
and  Belgium ;  and,  lastly,  English  may  have  been 
spoken  in  a  separate  form  by  the  Angles  in  Sleswick, 
though  it  cannot  have  differed  much  from  the  Frisian 
which  touched  it  on  the  south ;  it  was  nearly  akin 
to  the  Saxon  dialects,  by  the  side  of  which  it  was 
destined  to  exist  in  England,  and  eventually  to  give 
its  name  to  the  language  of  the  whole  country. 

14.  The  Scandinavian  and  the  Low  German  lan- 
guages agree  very  closely  in  the  forms  of  their  words, 
so  much  so  that  they  are  sometimes  all  classed 
together  as  Low  German  ;  the  phonetic  changes  have 
been  very  much  the  same.  In  this  they  differ  con- 
siderably from  High  German ;  but  High  German  also 
has  varied  considerably  from  its  eldest  form,  and  so 
far  has  approached  nearer  to  the  Low  German.  But 
the  great  difference  which  still  remains  can  be  easily 
seen  from  a  few  examples ;  thus  we  find  : — 


LOW   GERMAN. 

SCANDINAVIAN. 

HIGH  GERMAN. 

Gothic  —  tunthus  

Icelandic  —  tonn 

zahn. 

Dutch  —  tand  

Swedish  —  tand  . 

English—  tooth  (A.S.  tog) 

Danish  —  tand  .  .  . 

Gothic  —  deds  

Icelandic  —  da5  • 

that  (pionoun- 

Dutch  —  daad  

Swedish  —  dad  .. 

ced  *  tat,'  and 

English.  —  deed  . 

Danish  —  daad  .  . 

so  written    in 
old  Hi^-h  Ger- 

man.) 

15.  These  examples  may  be  sufficient  to  guard  you 
from  an  error  which  is  not  uncommon  among  young 
etymologers.  It  is  well-known  that  English  is  a 
Teutonic  language;  notwithstanding  the  infusion  of 


in.]  LANGUAGES  OF  AMALGAMATING  TYPE.      61 

numerous  Latin  words  through  the  French,  the 
grammar  of  the  English  language  remains  corrupted 
indeed,  but  essentially  Teutonic.  Now,  High  German, 
the  literary  language  of  modern  Germany,  is  the  only 
Teutonic  language,  except  our  own,  with  which  the 
mass  of  us  are  familiar  :  therefore,  we  often  find  that 
English  words  are  compared  with  their  German  equi- 
valents, as  though  these  presented  the  nearest  analogy 
to  them  (which  the  instances  above  given  show  that 
they  do  not) ;  nay,  we  find  them  even  derived  from 
the  German,  as  though  our  forefathers  had  come  from 
Sleswick  speaking  modern  High  German  !  Very  often 
such  derivation  is  palpably  impossible.  That  the 
oldest  Teutonic  form  of  the  word  was  '  tunth '  (pos- 
sibly with  some  further  suffix)  may  be  seen  from  the 
Sanskrit  danta,  and  Latin  den(t}s :  these  words  differ 
according  to  the  regular  variation  between  the  Teutonic 
and  the  Indo-European  (see  App.  I),  which  Sanskrit, 
Greek,  and  Latin  in  this  point  represent  accurately; 
but  they  show  the  nasal  and  dental  at  the  end  of  the 
word,  just  as  the  Gothic  and  the  Dutch  do ;  indeed 
in  Old  High  German  itself  the  word  was  zant.  Now 
English  has  thrown  away  the  n  (lengthening  the  vowel 
in  compensation)  and  kept  the  th;  German  has  thrown 
away  the  th  and  kept  the  n.  How  is  it  possible  that 
the  English  word  should  be  derived  from  the  Modern 
German  word  ?  But  it  cannot  be  derived  even  from 
the  older  form  of  the  German  word ;  the  z  by  the 
ordinary  laws  of  phonetics  could  not  pass  into  /,  though 
a  /  may  pass  into  a  z.  If,  therefore,  either  word 
was  derived  from  the  other,  the  German  word  was 
derived  from  the  English.  But  there  is  no  derivation 
one  way  or  the  other.  The  Angles  and  Saxons 
brought  into  England  the  speech  of  their  fathers, 
which  differed  as  a  dialect  from  that  of  the  ancestors 
of  the  South  Germans ;  and  these  differences  have 
been  developed  since.  Modern  High  German  is  but 
a  remote  cousin  of  English ;  the  nearest  relations  of 


62  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

our  speech  are  to  be  sought  on  the  shores  of  the 
Northern  and  the  Baltic  Seas. 

1 6.  In  this  description  of  the  different  forms  of 
human  speech,  we  have  rapidly  passed  in  review  the 
chief  languages  of  the  world.     We   have  seen  that 
many   languages   can    be   formed    upon    a   common 
principle,  without  its  being  necessary  or  warrantable 
to  assume  any  bond  of  kinship  between  those  who 
speak  them.      May  we  assume  such  a  bond  between 
those  who  speak  inflective  languages  ?     Certainly  not 
between  the  Aryan  and  the  Semitic  peoples.    Without 
deciding  on    the   question    what   degree   of  kinship 
community  of  language  implies,  we  make  our  answer 
that  here  language  gives  no  reason  for  the  assumption, 
because,  when  we  have  traced  each  family  back  to 
the  oldest  form  that  we  can  reach,  the  results  are  still 
far  asunder  and  do  not  even  seem  to  be  approximating. 
Nothing  can  be  more  unlike  than  the  irregular,  but 
generally  monosyllabic,  Aryan  roots,  and  the  triliteral 
Semitic   ones.     Plausible  comparisons  can  be  made 
between  the  numerals  and  even  the  pronouns  of  the 
original  languages  ;  but  the  former  are  the  most  likely 
parts  of  foreign  languages  to  be  assimilated,  in  order 
that  barter  may  be  carried  on  between  people  speaking 
different  languages  ;  and  the  latter  are  the  parts  of  a 
language  which  from  constant  use  are  most  liable  to 
decay  from  within.      Language,  then,  can  say  nothing 
for  a  common  origin  of  the  Aryan  and  Semitic  races, 
much  less  for  the  original  unity  of  man.      On  the 
other  hand  it  can  say  nothing  that  is  conclusive  against 
it.     For  so  immense  are  the  changes  which  take  place 
in  languages,  particularly  those  of  uncivilised  races, 
even  in  historic  time,  that  it  cannot  be  denied  that 
languages  apparently  so    utterly  diverse   as   Hebrew 
and  Greek  may  have  sprung  from  one  stock ;  but  it 
must  have  been  a  very  long  time  ago.     In  fact,  on 
this  point  the  science  of  language  should  be  dumb. 

17.  But  may  we  conclude  that  at  least  all  those 


in.]    LANGUAGES  OF  AMALGAMATING  TYPE.      63 

who  speak  Aryan  languages  are  connected  by  race  ? 
May  we  believe  that  each  of  us  is  (say)  25oth  cousin 
to  a  Hindu,  and  perhaps  2ooth  to  a  Russian?  Much 
of  what  is  said  by  those  who  deny  this  relationship 
may  be  readily  granted.  Thus  it  may  well  be  that 
some  island  in  the  Atlantic  or  Pacific  now  tenanted 
by  Europeans,  may  have  been  found  by  them  in- 
habited by  savages,  who  have  disappeared  before  a 
higher  civilisation,  and  left  absolutely  no  mark  in  the 
shape  of  language  by  which  after  one  or  two  genera- 
tions any  one  could  know  that  they  had  ever  existed. 
Nay,  such  may  be  the  case  even  with  Australia,  an 
island  as  big  as  a  continent.  There  can  be  little  doubt 
that  the  black  men  there  are  doomed  to  utter  extinc- 
tion ;  and  though  they  may  have  enriched  English 
with  the  word  '  boomerang,'  and  one  or  two  more, 
this  would  be  scanty  linguistic  evidence  apart  from 
historical  record.  Come  home  to  England  :  has  not 
the  Kymric  language  died  completely  out  of  Corn- 
wall ?  and  yet  must  not  the  blood  there  certainly  be 
far  more  Keltic  than  Teutonic  ?  Have  not  the  Kelt, 
the  Roman,  the  Teuton,  the  Dane,  the  Norseman, 
combined  to  form  the  English  race?  and  yet  don't 
we  all  speak,  different  dialects  indeed,  but  all  dialects 
of  a  Teutonic  language  ?  These  questions  are  often 
asked;  and  those  who  ask  them  see  no  answer  to 
them. 

1 8.  Now  English  is  certainly  one  language,  yet  the 
vocabulary  is  separable ;  and  any  one  who  knows  the 
languages  akin  to  those  out  of  which  it  is  formed,  can 
without  much  difficulty  point  out  its  component  parts. 
Some  of  the  evidence  of  this  we  have  already  seen  in 
our  sketch  of  the  English  dialects  ;  but  much  more  can 
be  found  by  a  close  observer.  He  will  see  how  the 
Scandinavian  settlements  in  the  east  and  north-west  of 
England  are  shown  .by  the  grammatical  forms  till  for 
'  to  '  ('  gang  till  him '  =  go  to  him)  at  for  '  to  '  (<  what 
hasta  at  do '  —  what  hast  thou  to  do) ;  by  the  plural 
6* 


64  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

form  are  instead  of  berth,  now  common  over  the  whole 
language  ;  perhaps  by  the  northern  conjugation  /  is, 
thou  is,  he  is,  which  remind  us  of  the  Danish  jeg  er, 
du  er,  han  er  (in  which  r  stands  for  s) ;  perhaps 
(though  this  is  disputed)  by  the  north  country  article 
/,  *  t  house/  '  t  ky/  which  looks  very  like  the  Norse 
et,  a  very  different  form  of  the  article  from  the  English 
the.  He  can  tell  the  different  times  at  which  words 
of  Latin  have  been  introduced  into  England  (Primer 
of  English  Grammar,  p.  5),  and  could  thus  draw  out 
a  rough  sketch  of  English  history. 

19.  Still  more  light  can  be  thrown  on  the  history 
of  this  country  by  the  names  of  places.  *  Craig/ 
'  glen/  '  combe '  and  '  pool '  still  speak  to  us  of  the 
time  when  land  and  water  were  the  heritage  of  the 
Kelt ;  and  many  a  scattered  '  pen '  from  Cornwall  to 
Cumberland,  from  Yorkshire  to  the  Grampians,  many 
a  *  tor '  in  Devonshire  and  Derbyshire,  attest  the  same 
fact.  Language  can  tell  him,  what  he  knows  from 
history,  that  the  Scandinavian  pirates  who  settled  in 
Cumberland  were  mainly  Norse,  he  knows  it  by  the 
'  thwaites '  in  which  they  settled,  the  *  garths '  which 
they  built,  the  *  gills  '  and  the  '  forces  '  to  which  they 
gave  their  names ;  for  thwaite  is  the  Icelandic  '  thveit ' 
(a  piece  of  land)  ;  garth  is  the  same  in  meaning  as  the 
English  '  yard  *  but  different  in  form  ;  gil  is  frequent 
as  a  local  name  in  Iceland  for  a  narrow  cleft  at  the 
side  of  a  main  valley  ;  fors,  a  waterfall,  is  now  a  'foss' 
in  Iceland,  as  in  Norway ;  but  the  preservation  of  the 
r  in  England  led  to  its  confusion  (in  spelling)  with  our 
English  'force/  He  will  connect  this  cluster  of  Norse 
names  with  the  Norse  wordy^W  in  Milford,  Waterford, 
and  Wexford  ;  and  so  will  be  able  by  language  alone  to 
trace  the  course  of  the  pirates  who  sailed  round  the 
north  of  Scotland,  and  settling  themselves  in  the  Isle 
of  Man,  spread  forth  to  Cumberland  and  down  the 
Irish  Channel.  On  the  other  hand,  he  will  see  that 
the  Scandinavian  occupants  on  the  east  were  Danes 


in.]    LANGUAGES  OF  AMALGAMATING  TYPE.      65 

by  the  extraordinary  number  of  places  which  end  in 
by  in  Leicestershire  and  Lincolnshire  and  northward 
through  East  Yorkshire.  This  is  a  regular  local  suffix 
for  a  town  or  village,  in  Denmark  and  Sweden ;  the 
corresponding  Icelandic  word  '  bser 7  is  used  of  a  farm 
or  farm  buildings.  In  Cleveland  (N.E.  Yorkshire)  it 
is  reckoned  that  at  least  three-fourths  of  the  nouns 
which  occur  in  Domesday  are  Danish.  Lastly,  in 
Cornwall  the  evidence  to  be  derived  from  the  names 
of  places  is  overpowering.  Though  nothing  but 
English  is  now  spoken  there,  nevertheless,  until  the 
rivers,  hills  and  towns  have  all  changed  their  names, 
the  history  of  the  country  will  remain  written  therein 
as  plain  as  any  book  to  those  who  have  eyes  to  see. 
Even  in  Australia  the  names  of  some  of  the  rivers 
seem  likely  to  be  perpetuated ;  and  such  a  name  as 
the  Murrumbidjee  would  be  fair  proof  that  the  English 
were  not  the  first  inhabitants  of  the  country. 

20.  When  two  different  languages  contend  for 
mastery  in  the  same  country,  there  are  many  causes 
which  may  determine  the  victory,  and  it  is  not  possible 
to  do  more  than  to  lay  down  as  a  general  rule  that  the 
language  of  the  more  civilised  people  will  remain  pre- 
dominant, whether  they  are  the  conquerors  or  the 
conquered.  They  have  names  for  things  which  are 
strange  to  the  ruder  race ;  and  these  are  naturally 
adopted  at  once  into  the  poorer  language.  Thus 
although  the  Franks  became  masters  of  Gaul,  yet  the 
language  of  the  Romanised  Kelts  survived,  though 
modified  in  many  strange  ways.  Perhaps  the  strangest 
of  all  is  the  translation  of  Teutonic  words  brought 
by  the  invaders  into  a  Latin  form,  as  ravenir  for 
zukunft,  the  future;  contree,  for  gegend,  country.  Again, 
a  conquering  race  is  generally  less  in  number  than 
the  conquered ;  whom  it  rarely  attempts  to  extirpate, 
preferring  to  keep  them  in  a  state  of  greater  or  less 
servitude.  Thus  the  English  language  could  survive 
the  Norman  Conquest ;  and  appear  English  after 


66  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

centuries,  only  full  of  Norman  French  words  and  with 
a  very  much  reduced  grammar. 

21.  The  case  is  somewhat  different  in  an  invasion 
by  a   numerous   savage   horde ;    this    either  sweeps 
past  in  its  desolating  course,  and   leaves   no   other 
trace  behind ;  or  it  permanently  occupies  a  country 
and  its  language  takes  the  empty  place,  as  that  of 
the   Huns.     We  have   seen  that   the  same   may  be 
the  case  when  a  European  nation  eradicates  a  savage 
one.     But   mixture  of   vocabulary   and   modification 
of  grammar  is  the  common  result  of  the  coalescence 
of  two  races  not  utterly  diverse  in  civilisation ;  and 
this    mixed    language    indicates    mixture    of    blood. 
But  there  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  any  people 
speaking  an  Aryan  language  has  ever  been  so  utterly 
displaced  by  some  non-Aryan  tribe,  that  the   blood 
of  the    succeeding  race   should  be  utterly  changed 
and  yet  the  language  remain  Aryan.     On  the  other 
hand  it  is  highly  probable  that  some  Aryan  races 
(especially  the  Indian)  have   invaded   a   non-Aryan 
country  and  dispossessed  the  older  people.    Here  there 
was  doubtless  some  mixture  of  race,  the  amount  of 
which  we  may  very  roughly  estimate  by  the  traces  of 
mixture  in  the  resulting  language  ;  though  this  test  is 
far  from  certain,  because  languages  change  internally 
as  well  as  from  external  causes.     But  clearly  in  such 
a  case  a  large  portion  of  the  blood  is  Aryan  ;  and  the 
result  would  seem  to  be  that  in  each  nation  of  Aryan 
speech    there   must    be    some    cousinship   however 
distant :  there  is  community,  not  identity,  of  blood. 

22.  It  is  possible  to  trace  back  singly  the  different 
lines  of  speech  which  we  have  briefly  described,  and 
to  arrive  at  a  common  Indo-European  language,  which 
must  have  been  spoken  by  a  fairly  civilised   tribe. 
This  language  contained  words  for  all  the  common 
relations  of  life — father,  mother,  brother,  sister,  son, 
and   daughter.     Some  of   these  can   be  still  further 
analysed;  others  probably  trace  back  to  an  earlier 


in.]    LANGUAGES  OF  AMALGAMATING  TYPE.      67 

time,  and  it  is  useless  to  try  to  find  out  why 
such  names  came  to  be  used.  Patar  (father)  and 
matar  (mother)  may  even  belong  to  the  childhood 
of  speech  itself,  the  suffix  only  being  peculiar  to  the 
Indo-European  speech  :  we  cannot  say.  But  son 
means  '  one  who  is  begotten ;  and  the  daughter  was 
the  '  milkmaid '  of  this  primitive  family.  The  con- 
nections by  marriage  have  their  terms ;  there  was  a 
name  for  the  daughter-in-law — 'she  who  belonged  to  the 
son' — for  the  father-in-law  and  for  the  brother-in-law,  of 
doubtful  meaning.  The  house  existed,  not  the  cave 
or  hole  in  the  rock  ;  and  it  had  doors,  not  the  half- 
underground  passage  of  the  Siberians.  The  people 
had  sheep  and  herds,  the  tendance  of  which  was  their 
main  employment,  and  of  agriculture  we  see  the  be- 
ginnings, the  knowledge  of  some  one  grain,  perhaps 
barley.  They  had  horses  to  drive,  not  to  ride,  goats, 
dogs,  and  bees ;  from  the  honey  they  made  a  sweet 
drink  (madhu  our  '  mead ')  ;  they  made  clothing  of 
the  wool  of  the  sheep  and  the  skins  of  beasts.  They 
had  to  guard  against  the  wolf,  the  bear,  and  the  snake 
(of  some  sort).  They  dressed  their  food  at  the  fire 
and  they  were  acquainted  with  soup.  They  also 
knew  and  could  work  three  metals,  gold,  silver,  and 
copper.  They  used  in  battle  the  sword  and  the  bow. 
They  made  boats,  but  they  knew  not  the  sea.  They 
could  reckon  up  to  a  hundred,  and  they  divided  their 
time  by  months,  according  to  the  moon  (the  measurer). 
In  religion  they  had  no  clear  term  for  God,  but  seem 
to  have  personified  the  sky  as  the  Heaven-father,  the 
source  of  light  and  life.  Clearly  such  a  race  as  this, 
so  far  advanced  in  the  knowledge  of  the  necessaries 
and  even  of  many  of  the  comforts  of  life,  differed  widely 
from  the  infinite  number  of  savage  races  which  even 
now  occupy  the  world ;  it  is  not  among  the  Indo- 
European  s  that  we  must  look  for  the  first  beginning 
of  man  upon  the  earth. 


68  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

CHAPTER  IV. 

HOW  OUR  WORDS  WERE  MADE. 

i.  How  did  this  people  and  the  different 
peoples  descended  from  it  make  their  words  ? 
We  have  seen  already  (Ch.  II.,  10)  that  their  languages 
were  inflectional  in  the  main  in  their  earlier  days,  and 
therefore  synthetic  ;  that  they  become  analytical  later 
on.  We  therefore  expect  to  find  words  composed  of 
different  elements,  which  are  not  capable  of  separate 
use  ;  these  may  at  first  be  unrecognisable,  but  by 
analysis  of  the  word,  and  by  comparison  of  the 
different  forms  which  it  takes  in  different  languages 
they  may  often  be  recovered.  And  so  in  that  primi- 
tive Indo-European  language  which  we  have  described, 
we  do  find  syllables,  called  suffixes,  which  denote 
relation,  attached  to  other  syllables  which  denote  an 
idea  generally.  These  last  are  called  roots,  and  of 
them  we  shall  soon  have  more  to  say.  Thus  we  know, 
because  the  derived  languages  attest  the  fact,  that  in 
Indo-European  ad-mi  meant  *  I  eat/  the  idea  of 
eating  in  relation  to  me  ;  vdk-as  meant  *  of  speech/ 
speech  considered  in  relation  to  something  else,  as 
*  the  sound  of  speech.'  These  inflectional  suffixes, 
as  they  are  called,  mi,  as,  and  the  like,  will  require  full 
explanation. 

2.  "But  there  is  something  else  to  occupy  us  first. 
These  two  words  ad-mi  and  vdk-as  are  simple 
forms,  where  the  inflectional  suffix  is  added  at  once 
to  the  root  ;  but  this  is  not  commonly  the  case. 
There  were  other  suffixes,  called  formative  suffixes, 
which  were  used  to  make  roots  into  nouns 
and  verbs,  to  which  inflectional  suffixes  were  added 
afterwards.  Thus  to  the  root  da  (=  give)  was  added 
the  suffix  tar,  and  datar  meant  *  a  giver/  but  not  yet 


iv.]  HOW  OUR  WORDS  WERE  MADE.  69 

in  any  special  relation ;  as  was  then  added  if  you 
wanted  to  say  'the  money  of  the  giver'  (ddtdras, 
Latin  ddtbris,  Greek  doteros).  This  intermediate  step 
between  a  root  and  a  word  is  called  a  base  or  a 
stem ;  the  first  term  means  something  which  is  not 
yet  a  real  word,  but  is  the  basis  of  one,  when  the 
necessary  inflectional  suffix  has  been  added. 

3.  This  middle  form  is  clear  in  languages  in  the 
synthetic  stage ;  in  these  the  base  is  used  as  a  word 
only  when  the  suffix  has  been  lost,  for  example  in 
the   imperative  mood,   as   Latin   die,  fac,   originally 
dic-e,  fac-e\  the  vocative  case,  as  dator,  'giver/  might 
seem  an  exception,  since  here  no  suffix  has  been  lost, 
for   none   was  put   on ;   but   the  vocative  does  not 
express  that  the  person   called  upon  stands  in  any 
relation   to   anyone  else,   and   therefore  no  suffix  is 
needed.     In  modern  analytic  languages  the  suffixes 
have  often  perished  wholesale,  and  the  base  is  left  to 
do  almostu  niversal  duty,  as  in  English,  where  giver's 
is  the  only  remaining  case  of  the  singular,  and  there 
is  but  one  case-form  givers  for  the  plural;  and  we 
say  /  bear,  you  bear,  we  bear,  they  bear,  without  any 
surviving  suffix  whatever. 

4.  Suffixes   added  directly  to  the  root  are  called 
primary  suffixes,  but  they  can  be  added  again  to 
a  base,    in  which   use  they  are  called   secondary 
suffixes  ;   thus  spinster  is  a  base  formed  from  spin 
by  the   suffix   ster,  which  was  used  in  Old   English 
as  a  mark  of  the  feminine  gender ;  you  can  then  add 
a  secondary  suffix  ish  and  make  a  secondary  base, 
used  as  an  adjective,  spinsterish.     These  suffixes  are 
very  numerous,    especially   those   used  to   form  the 
bases  of  nouns.     Each  language  has  developed  many 
of  its  own ;   thus   -ock   (in  bullock,  hillock]  -,   -kin  (in 
lamb-kin,  nap-kin}  •  -ing  as  a  patronymic  (in   so  many 
names    of  towns,    as    Wellington,    Willingham,    &c.) 
seem   to   be   especially  Teutonic,    or   at   least   were 
much  more  used  in  that  branch  than  in  the  Eastern 


70  PRIMER  OP  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

or  Southern  languages  of  the  common  family.  But 
a  great  number  can  be  traced  back  to  the  parent 
speech.  Naturally  they  have  undergone  many  changes 
of  form  in  their  wanderings.  I  will  give  examples 
of  a  few  of  the  most  recognisable  in  languages  of 
which  you  may  at  least  know  some.  For  the  changes 
of  some  of  the  letters  see  Appendix  2. 

5.  Tar — denoting  the   agent   in   Lat.  da-tor,  Gr. 
do-ter,  also  in  Lat.  actor,  vic-tor,  tu-tor,  £c.  ;  denoting 
relationship    in  Lat.  pa-ter,   Gr.  pa-ter,   Eng.  father, 
Germ,  va-ter,  also  in  Lat.  ma-ter,  f rater:  in  a  later  form 
tra,   denoting    instrumentality,    slightly   changed   in 
Germ,  mor-der,  Old  Engl.  mur-ther,  our  mur-der,  also 
laugh-ter,   slaughter  (root  slag  weakened   into    slay, 
and  in  cricketer's  English  to  slog),  perhaps  in  rudder, 
z\\<\  fodder  ;  but  here  the  double  d  is  a  later  spelling, 
and  the  suffix  may  be  only  -er  (as  it  certainly  is  in 
Icath-er,   A.-S.  fe^-er,    from   root  pat,    Sk.   patra(m\ 
and  pat  a  tra(tn\   ptero(ii)   for  pte-tro (//).);    in  needle, 
(Goth,  nt-thla,  for  nc-thrd) ;    in  Lat.  ara-tru(ni),   Gr. 
aro-tro(fi\  also  Lat.  ros-tru(m),  daus-tru(tn\  and  many 
others. 

6.  Ant— especially  used  in  present  participles,  as 
in  Lat  fer-ent(is),  Gr.  pher>ont(os),  Engl.  bear-ing  for 
O.  E.  ber-ende,  in  Germ,  geh-end,   arbeit-end,  &c.,  in 
Fr.  aim- ant,  &c, 

7.  Ma — as  in  Lat.  fu-mu(s\    Gr.   thu-mo(s\    Old 
Germ,   tou-m  (smoke)  ;  in  Lat.  for-mu(s),  (hot),   Gr. 
ther-mo(s),  our  war-m  ;   of  this   last  word  the  Indo- 
European  form  was  ghar-ma,  from  which  the  derived 
words  have  changed  so  much  in  form  according  to 
the   tendencies    of  the  different  languages  ;  also  in 
our  ar-m}  home,  &c. 

8.  Man — as   in  Lat.  no-men,  ag-men ;  and  with  a 
secondary  suffix,  to  (originally  ta),  in  augmento(ni), 
vesti-men-to(ni) ;    whence   the    Fr.    vete-ment  and  our 
vest-went,  and    the    countless   other    words   in   each 
language,   some   borrowed    from   the    Latin,    others 


ivj  BOW  OUR  WORDS  WERE  MADE.  71 

formed  within  the  language  on  the  analogy  of  the 
others,  as  Fr.  menage-merit,  our  endear-ment,  atone- 
ment, &c.,  where  the  Latin  suffix  is  added  to  English 
bases.  The  simple  suffix  man  was  found  in  Gothic 
too,  though  the  ;/  is  lost  in  the  cases,  as  na-man 
(nominative  namo),  our  name. 

9.  Mat — as  in  Greek  o-no-mat(os)  from  the  same 
root  gna    '  to   know/  which   with    a    different   suffix 
made  no-men  in  Latin. 

10.  Ta— especially  forming  past  participles,  as  in 
Lat.  fac-tu(s),  na-tu(s],  altu(s\  the  last  word  like  many 
participles    having    become  an    adjective ;    in    Greek 
kiu-to(s),  gno  to(s),  which  are  also  in  use  only  as  adjec- 
tives, having  been  superseded  by  a  different  form  for 
the  participle,  i.e.  meno(s)\  in  our  own   love-d,  hate-d. 
and  adjectives  like  loud  (the  very  same  word  as  klutos,, 
unlike  as  it  now  seems,  but  cp.  A.-S.  hlud],  naked 
(once  the    participle   of  a   verb,  which   we   find   in 
Chaucer  :  "  Why  nake  ye  your  bakkes  ?  "),  &c. 

11.  Other  very  common  suffixes  were  a,  i,  u,  ya,. 
va  ;  but  these  changed  their  forms  so  very  much  that 
you  would  not  recognise  them  at  first ;  you  may  trace 
them  especially  in  Greek  and  Latin,  where  they  played 
an  important  part,  as  soon  as  you  know  the  regular 
changes  which  consonants  and  vowels  of  the  original 
speech  underwent  in  each  of  these  languages.     Some 
of  our  most  important  English  suffixes  were  not  used 
in  Greek  and  Latin,  or  at  least  played  no  great  part 
there.     Such  are   -ing,  -ock,  -ish,  -kin,     or  -ster, 
already  mentioned ;    this    last   is   now   used  without 
regard  to  sex,  as  in  maltster,  tapster ;  it  was  an  English 
suffix  (like  the  others  here  mentioned),  and  was  super- 
seded by  the  Norman- French  -ess,  which  had  the  same 
force.     This  caused  curious  compounds   sometimes  ; 
thus  in  Old  English  sang-ere  (singer)  was  masculine, 
and  sang-estre  (songster)  was  feminine ;    then*  when 
this    distinction   was   forgotten   we    added    *  ess '   to 
songster,  and  made  songstress.,  a  double  feminine.     We 

r 


72  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

have  taken  a  great  ;nany  Latin  suffixes  in  French  or 
Latin  words,  such  as  -ine  in  div-inc,  -ive  in  capt-ive, 
nat-ive,  -ion  in  suspicion,  -tude  in  forti-tude,  -able  or 
-ble  in  culp-able,  sta-ble,  &c.;  and  these  (like  -ess)  we 
add  to  English  verbs  and  nouns  with  perfect  uncon- 
sciousness, as  eat-able,  sport-ive,  and  the  like. 

12.  Suffixes  used  in  the  formation  of  verbs  were 
rarer  than  those  used  in  the  formation  of  nouns. 
There  were  indeed  several  employed  to  distinguish 
certain  tenses  of  a  verb,  as  we  shall  see  hereafter;  but 
not  many  which  are  found  throughout  all  the  tenses, 
which  we  therefore  suppose  were  meant  to  distinguish 
a  verbal  base  from  a  root,  or  to  make  a  form  to  which 
it  was  easier  to  add  the  inflectional  suffixes.  The  - 
commonest  suffix  is  ya,  or  aya.  Thus  there  is  a 
root  vargj  meaning  to  work;  to  this  ya  was  added  in 
Greek,  and  made  varg-ya^  by  Greek  change  of  vowels 
verg-yo,  and  by  regular  consonantal  change  vregyo, 
vrezo,  rezo :  a  simpler  form  survived  in  the  noun 
(v)erg-o(n) :  in  Gothic  the  word  became  vaurk-y-an, 
whence  our  own  verb  work.  Often,  however,  this 
new  suffix  expressed  a  modification  of  meaning  in  the 
verb  :  thus  bhar  meant  to  bear — Greek  phero  and 
Latin  fero;  but  bhdraya  meant  to  *  cause  to  bear/ 
Greek  phoreo,  where  the  e  is  all  that  is  left  of  the 
original  aya.  So  dar  is  to  burst — the  same  root  as 
our  tear:  ddlaya  (where  r  has  passed  into  /)  is  found 
both  in  Sanskrit  and  in  Latin  deleo,  meaning  '  to  cause 
to  burst/  or  '  to  destroy.1  Sometimes,  as  you  see, 
there  is  a  change  in  the  vowel  of  the  root  as  well  as 
a  suffix ;  this  is  probably  caused  by  the  assimilating 
influence  of  the  suffix.  This  vowel  change  is  what 
we  regularly  find  in  English  in  the  formation  of 
causal  verbs,  without  any  suffix  left ;  yet  we  feel 
tolerably  certain  from  the  parallel  forms  of  the  verbs 
in  Icelandic  that  this  was  their  history.  Thus  we 
have  '  to  sit,'  causal  *  to  set; '  '  to  //>/  causal  '  to  lay : ' 
here  the  Anglo-Saxon  settan,  '  to  set/  lecgan  4  to  lay/ 


iv.]     HOW  OUR  WORDS  WERE  MADE.      73 

give  us  no  help.  But  in  Icelandic  we  find  setja  and 
leggja  (j  is  pronounced  in  Icelandic  as  y\  where  the 
suffix  does  actually  occur,  and  seems  to  have  produced 
the  vowel  change.  Again,  these  causal  verbs  take  the 
later  or  'weak'  perfect-form  (see  Ch.  V.,  15);  thus 
lay  makes  laid:  but  the  simple  verbs  take  the  older 
'  strong '  for.m  ;  thus  lie  makes  lay :  this  is  another 
sign  that  the  simple  verbs  are  older  than  the  causals. 

13.  This  short  sketch  will  have  shown  you  what 
formative   suffixes  are  in  our  family  of  speech — little 
syllables  which  have  now  no  meaning  of  their  own, 
whatever  they  may  have  had  once.     But  they  can 
turn  a  root  into  a  verb  or  a  noun  :  and  then  the 
personal  suffixes  can  express  the  person  acting  through 
the  verb ;  and  the  case-suffixes  can  show  the  relation 
in  which  the  person  or  thing  denoted  by  a  noun  stands 
to  other  persons   or   things.       Of   these    inflectional 
suffixes  we  will  speak  presently.     But  what  now  are 
these  roots  to  which  the  suffixes  were  added  ?     They 
are  not  words,  for  we  never  find  them  used  alone, 
except  in  those  special   cases  in  which  da  may  mean 
give!  as  a  command.     In  this  respect  they  differ  from 
those  Chinese  monosyllables  which  we  spoke  about 
before ;  because  each  of  those  can  be  used  alone  to 
express  what  we  should  call  a  substantive,  or  an  adjec- 
tive, or  a  verb.     We  know  how  we  have  got  them : 
we  have  stripped  off  all  the  formative  suffixes  from 
several  words  alike  in  their  general  meaning,  as  ag-o, 
ac  tus,  agmen,  &c.  in  Latin,  and  the  residue,  ag,  we  call 
a  root. 

14.  Now  this   result   is  arrived  at  by  a  scientific 
process.     We  examine  words  as  real  things,  and  find 
some  sound  or  combination  of  sounds  common  to  all, 
as  ag ;  and  this  we  say  represented  the  general  idea 
of  *  driving ; '  and  other  like  forms  give  the  idea  of 
'  riding/  'going/  'giving/  or  what  not.    But  we  cannot 
suppose  that  our  primitive  forefathers  did  this  ;  we 
may  be  quite  sure  that  they  did  not  speculate  about 


74  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

the  history  of  their  words.  Words  to  them  were  only 
means  to  an  end,  to  convey  their  meaning  to  one 
another ;  and  they  would  have  been  much  puzzled  if 
anybody  could  have  talked  to  them  of  the  roots  of 
their  speech.  Our  analysis  ends  with  roots ;  and  to 
us  roots  are  the  beginning  of  the  speech  of  our  race, 
the  elements  which  admit  of  no  further  change.  But 
they  were  not  the  beginnings  to  our  forefathers ;  they 
were  simply  sounds  admitting  of  change,  increase,  and 
diminution,  representing  general  ideas;  and  about 
them  could  be  clustered  new  words  to  represent  the 
change  of  that  idea,  just  as  a  verb  such  as  derive  may 
be  a  nucleus  to  us  for  derivation,  and  derivative,  and 
derivable,  and  as  many  more  as  we  want.  But  '  derive ' 
came  down  to  us,  and  we  know  its  history ;  it  meant 
to  draw  down  a  stream  (rivits  in  Latin),  and  was  first 
of  all  used  only  in  the  literal  sense,  then  metaphori- 
cally; and  we  can  trace  rivus  back  to  a  root,  sru,  'to 
run,'  and  that  may  have  come  from  a  simpler  root, 
scir,  and  there  we  stop.  We  know  nothing  of  the 
previous  history  of  sar,  neither  did  our  fathers. 

1 5.  Here,  then,  is  the  difference  between  the  two  ; 
we  know  all  about  derive,  probably  no  one  ever  did 
know  anything  about  sar.  But  there  is  no  reason  to 
suppose  that  sar  is  essentially  different  from  derive, 
that  it  had  no*older  form,  or  that  many  other  words 
had  not  been  formed  from  it,  and  died  before  the 
Indo-European  period.  Neither  must  we  suppose 
that  many  other  combinations  of  sounds,  as  well  as 
sar,  did  not  exist  with  much  the  same  idea  in  the 
older  time,  and  then  died  out,  when,  for  some  reason 
or  other,  sar,  with  all  its  derivatives,  took  people's 
fancy  more.  Depend  upon  it,  there  was  a  history  of 
language  in  those  days,  which  will  never  be  written 
'any  more  than  the  other  history  of  prehistoric  man. 
There  is  no  new  thing  under  the  sun  ;  the  thing  which 
is,  that  thing  has  also  been.  Speech  grew  and  decayed 
then  as  now.  You  may  fancy  the  earlier  history  of 


IV.]  HOW  OUR  WORDS  WERE  MADE.  75 

our  parent  language  as  a  countless  number  of  lines 
all  converging  to  one  point,  like  the  middle  of  an  hour- 
glass, at  what  we  call  the  Indo-European  language ; 
and  then  widening  out  again  as  before.  Of  the  lower 
half  of  this  hour-glass  we  know  something — of  the 
upper  half  nothing ;  and  the  narrow  middle  is  a  con- 
venient place  for  examining  its  structure.  But  that  is 
not  the  beginning  of  the  hour-glass ;  and  further,  there 
is  more  than  one  hour-glass  in  the  world  at  the  same 
time.  Just  so  roots  are  not  the  beginning  of 
speech ;  also  the  roots  of  our  family  of  speech  are  not 
the  only  roots  in  the  world.  Roots  are  excellent 
labels  to  show  that  a  lot  of  words  form  one 
class,  and  another  lot  a  distinct  class,  and  that  the 
two  classes  mustn't  be  mixed;  and  woe  to  the  ety- 
mologer who  persists  in  mixing  them.  But  roots  are 
nothing  more. 

1 6.  You  may  have  observed  that  all  the  roots  I 
have  mentioned  denote  some  action — 'going/ 
*  giving/  or  the  like — some  operation  which  is  regularly 
expressed  by  a  verb.     From  these  were  formed  nouns 
denoting  some  one  of  the  properties  of  the  thing; 
thus  dru  (a  tree)  was  a  '  thing  split/  from  the  root  dar 
(to  split) ;  nau  or  navi  (a  ship)  was  formed  from  a  root 
snd  or  snu  (to  swim),  and  so  on.     We  cannot  indeed 
always  connect  the  noun  with  its  root ;  but  there  is 
little  doubt  that  the  general  principle  of  formation  of 
nouns  was  to  describe  them  by  some  one  property. 
There   is,  however,  a  class  of  words,  pronouns  and 
also  some  adverbs  and  conjunctions,  which  cannot  be 
so  explained ;  their  meaning  is  too  general  to  justify 
us  in  connecting  them  with  any  verbal  root ;  and  they 
must  therefore  be  left  to  stand  each  by  itself.     They 
are    sometimes   called    pronominal   roots  ;    as  /', 
this,   /#,  that,    ma,   the   base  of    the   first   personal 
pronoun,  &c. 

17.  There  is  yet  another  method  of  forming  nouns 
distinct  from  those  we  have  described.     This  is  called 


76  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

composition — the  joining  together  of  base  to  base 
instead  of  suffix  to  base;  and  so  making  a  new  noun 
which  combines  the  two  ideas  in  some  compound,  the 
exact  sense  of  which  is  to  be  made  clear  by  the  con- 
text. In  languages  where  case  suffixes  have  been 
lost,  as  our  own,  there  is  no  distinction  between  the 
base  and  the  noun  in  actual  use  ;  in  these  we  may  say 
that  the  compound  consists  of  two  or  more  nouns,  eg. 
oak-tree,  gospel  (good-spell),  &c.  Sometimes  the  second 
base  does  not  exist  apart  from  the  compound,  or  a 
similar  one,  as  in  Latin  fidicen  =  l  string  player,'  caeli- 
cola-  '  heaven-dweller ;'  but  the  last  part  of  the  com- 
pound in  all  these  cases  is  clearly  more  than  a  mere 
suffix.  It  is  essentially  a  base ;  cola  is  formed  from 
root  col  with  the  suffix  a;  such  words  as  caelicola  must, 
therefore,  be  called  compounds.  If,  instead  of  making 
these  two  words  into  one,  we  chose  to  use  them  sepa- 
rately, one  of  them  would  be  in  a  certain  case,  or  be 
used  with  a  preposition  (according  to  the  nature  of 
the  language) ;  thus  fidicen  would  be  be  '  qui  fidi/wj 
canit,'  'one  who  plays  with  the  strings.'  Therefore 
if  we  want  to  explain  the  syntactic  nature  of  the  com- 
pound, we  should  call  it  an  instrumental-compound, 
i.e.  one  the  first  part  of  which  stands  to  the  second  in 
the  relation  of  an  instrumental  case.  In  the  same 
way  ard-tenens  (bow-holder)  will  be  an  accusative 
compound,  viti-sator  (vine-planter)  is  a  genitive  com- 
pound, caeli-cola  (heaven-dweller)  a  locative  com- 
pound. 

1 8.  Often  in  our  own  language  these  compounds 
are  so  much  corrupted  that  the  two  parts  are  not  at 
first  recognisable,  eg.  nostril  for  nose  thirl,  =  hole  in 
the  nose  ;  sheriff  for  shire-reeve,  orchard  for  wort-yard 
(literally  '  root-enclosure '),  now  only  used  in  a  limited 
sense.  Sometimes  the  first  member  has  been  syntacti- 
cally an  adjective ;  these  may  be  called  adjective - 
compounds,  as  good-man,  i.e.  a  husband,  house-wife 
(corrupted,  alas !  into  huzzy),  where  house  is  used  as 


iv.]  HOW  OUR  WORDS  WERE  MADE.  77 

an  adjective.  Each  of  these  two  compounds  conveys 
an  idea  complete  in  itself,  i.e.  they  are  substantives. 
But  in  English  such  compounds  are  almost  always 
used  as  adjectives,  e.g.  barefoot,  snow-white;  they  may 
then  be  called  attributive  compounds,  and  they  require 
some  noun  with  which  to  agree,  as  a  '  snow-white 
hand  ;  '  except  where  the  attribute  is  so  distinctive  as 
to  become  a  proper  name,  e.g.  Blackfoot,  the  name  of 
an  Indian  tribe,  or  Barbarossa  (red-beard),  the  nick- 
name of  the  Emperor  Frederick.  Very  often  these 
compounds  have  a  suffix  attached,  as  bare-foot-ed. 
Sometimes,  but  not  very  often,  the  last  part  of  a 
compound  is  a  verb,  as  Lat.  man-do  for  manu-do  =  '  I 
put  into  the  hand/  and  our  English  back-bite,  white- 
wash^ &c.  It  is  not  an  uncommon  irregularity  in  the 
making  of  these  compounds  in  inflectional  languages 
that  a  case  is  used  instead  of  a  base  for  one  member, 
generally  the  first,  as  iuris-consultus,  aquae-ductus ;  and 
fater-familias,  where  the  genitive  stands  last.  This 
really  means  that  two  distinct  words  have  become  so 
associated  together  that  they  are  pronounced  without 
a  break,  and  consequently  written  as  one  word. 
There  are  many  of  these  in  French,  as  connetable 
(constable)  for  comes  stabuli,  Finisterre  for  finis-terrae, 
Montmartre  for  the  mount  of  martyrs.  We  have  a 
few  English  words  where  the  genitive,  our  sole  sur- 
viving case,  is  similarly  used,  as  kins-man,  dooms-day, 
colts-foot,  dais-y  (day's  eye). 

19.  In  our  European  languages  compounds  are 
commonly  made  of  but  two  words,  to  which,  if  they 
are  to  be  further  increased,  suffixes  only  are  added, 
as  light-heart,  lightheart-ed,  lighthearted-ness,  &c.  The 
Sanskrit,  however,  was  especially  distinguished  by  its 
power  of  forming  compounds  of  any  length  ;  and  one 
of  the  greatest  difficulties  of  the  language  lies  in  the 
finding  out  the  exact  relation  of  the  different  parts. 
Thus  a  Hindu  could  speak  of  a  man  as  being  '  tiger- 
king-hand-sword-killed  (a  very  moderate  compound). 


78  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

This  would  mean  '  killed  by  a  sword  in  the  hand  of  a 
king  who  was  like  a  tiger/  It  is  plain  that  such  com- 
pounds must  tax  the  ingenuity  of  those  who  wish  to 
find  out  their  syntax ;  and  after  all  they  must  often  be 
ambiguous,  capable  of  expressing  more  relations  than 
one,  and  this  ambiguity  prevailed  even  in  short  com- 
pounds. With  us  a  compound  like  horse-man  is 
definite  enough  ;  but  to  a  Hindu  it  might  mean  a 
man  on  a  horse,  or  a  man  like  a  horse,  or  (if  declined 
in  the  dual)  a  horse  and  a  man.  The  Indian  com- 
pounds, however,  are  more  expressive  than  ours,  no 
doubt  because  the  genius  of  the  language  breaks  out 
in  this  way.  Thus  one  name  for  a  bird  is  martdm/ii, 
which  is  literally  the  '  child  of  a  dead  egg  ; '  a  moun- 
tain is  a-chala,  a  '  non-mover,'  &c. 

20.  It  may  perhaps  have  struck  you  that  these  two 
ways  of  making  words,  the  one  by  formative  suffixes, 
and  the  other  by  composition,  are  not  so  different 
in  their  nature  after  all.     This  shows  itself  plainly 
enough  from  the  English  language.     Thus  we  have 
seen  that  ly  is  called  a  suffix ;  it  turns  a  noun  to  an 
adjective,  as  God,  godly,  man,  manly;  or  an  adjective 
to  an  adverb,  as  truthful,  truthfully.     But  by  tracing 
the  word  back  we  find  that  its  older  form  was  lie — and 
this  is  neither  more  nor  less  than  our  existing  word 
like;  and  we  can  make  compounds  with  like,  as  god- 
like, man-like.    These  do  indeed  differ  in  some  degree 
in  meaning  from  godly  and  manly.     We  call  Odysseus 
(following  Homer)  godlike,  but  we  don't  think  of  him 
as  godly ;  but  they  point  out  that  in  form  there  is 
no  fixed  line  to  be  drawn  between  the  two  methods, 
composition  and  derivation — that  a  member  of  a  com- 
pound can  become  in  time  a  suffix  with  no  meaning  ex- 
cept what  use  fixes  for  it :  so  much,  that  we  can  even 
say  likely,  i  e.  like  +  like,  without  the  least  disquiet. 

21.  We  can  prove  by  many  other  suffixes,  which 
were  once  independent  words,  that  what  we  now  call 
derivatives  were  once  in  reality  compounds.    Such  are 


iv.]  HOW  OUR  WORDS  WERE  MADE.  79 

thral-dom,  wis-dom,  earl-dom,  from  the  Old  English 
dom,  meaning  judgment ;  it  is  used  separately  as  our 
doom,  but  in  the  compounds  it  passes  from  its  original 
meaning  into  the  general  sense  of  '  authority/  and  so 
the  sphere  in  which  that  authority  is  exercised.  God- 
head, maidenhead,  manhood,  childhood,  &c.,  are  from  the 
older  form  had,  a  state,  as  we  saw  above  (Ch.  II.,  7) ; 
when  this  word  was  lost,  the  meaning  of  the  two  parts 
of  each  compound  was  lost  also,  and  the  second  part 
became  a  suffix.  Yet  you  see  a  curious  instance  of 
the  fondness  of  people  for  having  some  meaning  at 
least  apparent  in  the  words  they  use,  even  though  it 
be  quite  wrong ;  had  was  altered  into  head  and  hood, 
each  of  which  has  a  meaning,  either  alone  or  in  some 
compounds.  But  neither  of  them  has  any  meaning 
at  all  in  such  compounds  as  those  of  which  we  are 
speaking  ;  only  our  ears  are  satisfied  by  the  similitude 
of  sense  (see  Ch.  I.,  44).  In  the  same  way  rick,  in 
bishoprick,  is  for  rice,  cp  German  reich,  power ;  ship  in 
friendship,  lordship,  &c.,  is  from  scipe,  or  scepe,  meaning 
shape,  and  so  in  these  compounds  the  form  or  condition 
is  expressed.  The  same  word,  differently  pronounced, 
is  heard  in  landscape,  a  shaping  or  drawing  of  land. 
These  facts  show  how  easily  a  compound  can  lose  the 
identity  of  its  parts,  and  how  the  subordinate  part 
can  slip  into  a  suffix ;  and  we  have  good  reason  for 
supposing  that  many  other  suffixes  in  other  languages 
as  well  as  English  may  have  had  a  similar  history. 

22.  These  are  the  regular  methods  by  which  an 
inflecting  language  forms  and  constantly  increases  its 
stock  of  bases  or  words,  wherever  the  two  are  practi- 
cally the  same  thing,  as  with  us.  But  beside  these, 
words  may  be  borrowed  ready-made  from  another 
language.  When  some  new  thing  is  invented  by  one 
people  and  taken  into  use  by  another,  it  is  of  course 
most  natural  to  take  the  name  with  the  thing ;  though 
sometimes  the  word  is  simply  translated,  as  when  our 
railroad  became  eisenbahn  in  German,  and  chemin  de 
6* 


8o  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

fer  in  French.  The  Romans  borrowed  from  the  Greeks 
— a  more  highly  civilised  race  than  themselves — most 
of  their  terms  of  art  and  science  ;  these  they  borrowed 
of  course  in  the  base-form,  and  inflected  after  their 
own  manner,  e.g.  they  borrowed  poeta  (a  base),  and 
made  the  genitive  poetae,  not  poietou,  as  in  Greek. 
We  unconsciously  imitate  the  Romans  in  borrowing, 
though  not  inflecting,  whenever  we  coin  our  new 
scientific  terms  out  of  Greek  bases,  as  proto-plasm, 
and  the  like.  Naturally  these  borrowed  words  are 
much  more  numerous  in  modern  languages  than  in 
ancient.  Our  thoughts  are  widened  by  freer  inter- 
course with  foreign  nations,  and  our  vocabulary  is 
enriched  by  commerce.  We  have  incorporated  words 
not  merely  from  European  nations — words  without 
number  from  France,  sloop  and  yacht  from  Holland, 
flotilla,  cigar,  and  mosquito  from  Spanish,  stucco,  portico, 
and  balustrade,  from  Italy — but  even  India  has  sent  us, 
together  with  the  thing  itself,  the  name  for  calico,  chintz, 
rice,  and  sugar;  Persia  has  given  us  chess,  orange  (rightly 
norange),  and  shawl ;  gingham  comes  from  Java,  tea, 
caddy,  and  nankeen  from  China,  bantam  is  Malay,  cocoa, 
potato,  and  tobacco  are  American.  There  are  many  still 
older  words  borrowed  from  Arabic,  among  which  those 
beginning  with  the  article  al  are  easily  recognisable 
i.e.  alchemy,  alembic  (Ch.  I.,  6),  almanac,  and  alcohol. 


CHAPTER  V. 

HOW   WORDS    ARE   GOT   READY    FOR   USE. 

i.  Now  we  have  seen  something  of  the  formation 
of  noun-bases  and  verb-bases — of  elements,  that  is, 
which  were  not  generally  used  as  words  in  the  earlier 
stages  of  the  languages  of  our  group,  but  which  have 
frequently  come  to  be  thus  used  in  the  later  analytic 
stage.  But  in  the  older  stage  of  our  languages  some- 
thing more  was  required  before  these  bases  were  used 


v.] 


HOW  WORDS  ARE  PREPARED. 


Si 


— something  to  show  the  relation  in  which  one  base 
stood  to  another.  This  want  was  supplied  by  the 
inflectional  suffixes  ;  and  these  we  must  now  con- 
sider. You  may  see  their  importance  from  the  fact 
that  they  have  given  a  name  to  the  group  of  *  inflec- 
tional' languages.  We  have  but  traces  of  them  in 
English  ;  but  in  languages  like  Sanskrit,  Latin,  and 
Greek  they  are  all-important.  First,  then,  we  will 
take  the  verb,  and  see  how  the  personal-suffixes 
arose ;  e.g.  why  phe-mi  in  Greek  meant  ' 1  say,'  and 
then  why  phe-so  meant  '  I  will  say ; '  this  new  form  is 
really  a  new  base,  as  we  shall  see,  but  the  tense- 
forms  cannot  be  conveniently  treated  till  the  personal 
suffixes  have  been  described.  Then  we  will  pass  to 
the  noun,  and  trace  out  the  history  of  those  case- 
suffixes,  which,  when  added  to  the  base,  expressed 
the  different  relations  in  which  the  person  or  thing 
denoted  by  the  base  could  stand ;  how  in  Greece,  for 
example,  the  base  oiko-  (a  house),  became  oiko-s  when 
the  house  was  the  subject  of  a  sentence,  as  *  the  house 
stands;'  oiko  n,  when  the  object  was  to  be  denoted — 
'  he  builds  a  house  ; '  oiko-i,  to  express  *  in  a  house ; ' 
oiko-then,  '  from  a  house  ; '  oiko-u,  '  of  a  house  ; '  oiko-i, 
*  inclination  towards  a  house,'  with  other  meanings 
which  attached  themselves  later.  There  were  even 
more  forms  of  this  sort,  as  we  shall  see  after  we  have 
discussed  the  verb-forms. 

2.  The  commonest  forms  and  probable  meanings 
ot  the  personal  suffixes  are  as  follows  : — 


SINGULAR. 

PLURAL. 

-mi  —  I  

-mas  =  we. 

Second  Person  .... 
Third  Person 

-si    •=  thou  
-ti    —  he  . 

-tas    =  ye. 
-nti     —  they. 

82  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

Thus,  from  root  da  (to  give),  base  dada,  we  get  in 
Indo-European  : 

dada-mi  =  I  give.  dada-mas    =  we  gire. 

dada-si    =  thou  givest.  dada-tas      =  ye  give, 

dada-ti    =  he  gives.  dada-nti      =  they  give. 

3.  Now  it  is  in  the  nature  of  the  case  probable  that 
the  singular  suffixes  should,  at  least  in  their  oldest 
forms,  mean  *  I,'  '  thou,'  *  he/  before  they  are  attached 
to  the  verb ;  there  is  an  obvious  fitness  in  such  a 
method  of  expressing  the  combined  ideas  *  I  am,' 
1  thou  art/  *  he  is/  which  goes  some  way  to  support 
any  arguments  which  can  be  drawn  from  their  forms. 
And  those  arguments  are  strong.  It  is  true  that 
;///'  and  //  are  not  pronouns  in  separate  use ;  but  ma 
is  the  base  of  the  first  personal  pronoun,. and  ta  is 
one  base  of  the  demonstrative  '  he  ; '  and  this  slight 
weakening  from  a  to  /  might  naturally  occur  in  a  final 
syllable ;  si  is  not  so  near  the  base  for  '  thou/  which 
is  twa;  we  know,  however,  that  in  some  of  the 
derived  languages  (as  in  Greek)  ///  in  certain  cir- 
cumstances changes  into  s.  Now  it  is  very  unsafe  to 
argue  from  the  phonetic  changes  found  amongst  one 
people  at  one  time  to  those  found  at  another  time  in 
another  people.  Each  people  develops  its  own  pecu- 
liarities of  speech.  Thus  we  have  seen  that  English- 
men of  the  present  day  dislike  the  guttural  gh  which 
our*fathers  liked ;  that  Frenchmen  dislike  an  h  or  a 
w  ;  that  the  Greeks  could  sound  neither  y  nor  v,  and 
therefore  rejected  both.  But  to  argue,  for  example, 
that  because  one  people  drops  the  letter  v,  therefore 
it  has  been  dropped  in  some  particular  word  of  another 
language  in  which  v  is  regularly  retained,  is  not  safe 
reasoning.  All  that  can  be  asserted  is  this  :  if  we 
find  a  change  of  sound  regularly  established  in  one 
language,  we  allow  it  to  be  possible  for  another ;  but 
more  than  the  usual  evidence  is  necessary  before  we 
can  regard  as  probable  a  derivation  based  on  the 


v.]  HOW  WORDS  ARE  PREPARED.  83 

assumption  of  such  a  change ;  because  for  the  second 
language  the  presumption  is  against  the  change ;  if  it 
took  place  in  the  word  which  we  are  now  considering, 
why  did  it  not  take  place  generally?  Therefore  this 
change  of  twa  or  twi  into  si  in  the  parent-speech 
must  be  defended  on  the  analogy  of  the  first  and  third 
persons.  If  they  represent  the  pronouns  *  I  '  and  l  he,' 
it  is  highly  probable  that  'si'  should  represent  'thou;' 
and  the  phonetic  change  is  possible.  We  must  also 
note  that  ma  is  the  base  from  which  all  the  cases  of 
the  first  pronoun  are  formed  except  the  nominative ; 
but  the  nominative  is  quite  distinct  from  the  other 
cases ;  the  oldest  form  is  agham,  whence  the  ego  of 
the  Greek  and  Latin,  arid  the  ik  of  the  Gothic ;  which 
has  shrunk  into  our  /,  through  our  dislike  of  final 
gutturals.  But  in  every  one  of  the  cognate  languages 
all  the  other  cases  are  clearly  derived  from  ma. 
This  new  form  for  the  nominative  must  clearly  have 
come  into  use  when  the  distinction  of  the  subject 
and  object,  specially  important  in  the  pronoun  of  the 
first  person,  was  clearly  felt.  Therefore  the  use  of 
ma  to  form  the  personal  suffix  carries  us  back  to  a 
time  when  the  distinction  was  not  felt  to  be  sufficiently 
important  to  need  different  forms,  and  so  the  new 
nominative  had  not  come  into  use. 

4.  The  history  of  the  plural  forms  is  not  equally 
clear ;  but  there  is  reason,  both  from  their  form  and 
from  the  analogy  of  the  singular,  to  believe  that  they 
expressed  'we,'  'ye,'  and  'they/  Mas  has  been  in- 
geniously explained  as  equivalent  to  ma  +  twa  =  I 
and  thou  ;  matwa  would  pass  through  matwi  into 
mast,  a  form  which  occurs  in  the  Veda.  Similarly  tas 
can  be  explained  as  =  thou  and  thou.  The  third 
person  is  very  obscure ;  it  differs  from  the  singular 
only  by  the  n  before  the  ///  and  n  is  sometimes  used 
as  a  strengthening  sound,  e.g.  in  verbs  like  Latin  pango, 
from  root  pag;  it  also  occurs  not  unfrequently  in 
neuters  plural  \  but  these  throw  no  clear  light  upon 
8 


84  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

the  verb ;  some  etymologists  think  that  it  marks 
an  inserted  pronominal  base  an — so  that  an  +  // 
should  mean  'he'  +  'he' — two  different  forms  with 
the  same  meaning,  which  I  think  unlikely. 

5.  These  oldest  forms  have  been  exactly  preserved 
in  Sanskrit.     The  Latin  has  kept  very  near  to  them, 
as  may  be  seen  by  anyone  who  looks  at  the  verb  '  to 
be ; '  su-m,  cs,  es-t,  su-mus,  es-tis,  su-nt.     In  English 
only  fragments  are  now  left :  if  we  want  to  see  the 
typical  Teutonic  forms,  we  must  go  to  the  Gothic, 
where  we  find  /-/;/,  /-j,  />-/,  siyu-m,  siyu-th,  si-nd,   and 
the  Old  English  forms  are  familiar  to  all  students  of 
our  language  ;   com,  eart   (where  r  =  s\  is;   syndon 
stands  for  all  persons  in  the  plural.     Our  fathers  used 
also  another  root  with  the  same  meaning,  that  which 
you  see  in  Latin  fu-i;  this  was  originally  bhu,  and 
became  quite  regularly  ///  in  Latin,  and  bu  in  Low 
German  languages ;   this   was  conjugated  beam,    bisty 
bith  ;  and  beoth  in  the  plural ;  instead  of  this  ///,  s  was 
used  in  the  plural  in  the  north  of  England,  as  we  have 
already  seen.     It  will  of  course  be  noted  that  the  m 
of  the  first  person  singular  was  frequently  dropped. 
In  Greek  the  so-called  'verbs  in  mi'  are  few;  and  in 
Latin  inquam  and  sum  are  the  only  presents  so  formed. 
In  each  language  the  present  generally  ended  in  o, 
which   was   the   final   vowel   of  the   base,   and   was 
lengthened  by  compensation  (Ch.  I.  38). 

6.  The  verb  was  further  distinguished  in 
our  group  of  languages   by  its   capacity  of 
expressing  different  times  of  action — present, 
past,  and  future.    The  present  time  could  be  expressed 
by  the  simple  root  with  the  personal  suffixes,  as  es-ti, 
=  he  is ;  but  generally  the  root  was  modified  into  a 
base. 

(i)  By  being  repeated  (Reduplication),  as  in 
Greek  di-db-mi ;  probably  to  express  that  the 
action  is  a  continuous  one — not  merely  momen- 
tary ;  a  distinction  which  in  English  we  express  by  a 


v.]  HOW  WORDS  ARE  PREPARED.  85 

periphrasis,  such  as  'I  am  living'  instead  of  'I  live;' 
almost  the  only  instance  of  such  reduplication  in 
Teutonic  is  seen  in  the  Gothic  gagga,  doubled  from 
ga^  to  go ;  this  yet  survives  in  our  north  English 
gang.  This  method  is  certainly  an  old  one,  for  it  is 
found  in  some  wide-spread  verbs  which  denote  simple 
ideas,  like  standing,  going,  giving,  drinking,  in  both 
the  European  and  the  Asiatic  languages.  It  is  perhaps 
most  important  in  Sanskrit ;  here  it  is  regularly  used 
to  form  what  are  called  intensive  and  desiderative 
verbs,  i.e.  those  which  express  doing  a  thing  constantly, 
and  wishing  to  do  it ;  and  then  these  were  regarded 
in  time  as  distinct  verbs,  and  were  conjugated 
throughout,  not  merely  in  the  present,  in  this  redu- 
plicated form.  Traces  of  these  may  be  found  in 
Greek  and  Latin,  where  they  generally  have  a  causal 
sense,  e.g.  Greek  bi-ba-o  =  '  I  make  to  go/  from  root 
ba,  '  to  go,'  sldo,  for  si-sedo,  I  make  to  sit  (root  sed) ; 
cp.  Ch.  IV.  12. 

(2)  By  having  its  vowel  augmented,  as  in  Greek 
leip-o  (root  lip),  '  I  am  leaving,'  or  Gothic  greipa  (root 
grip},  '  I  am  griping.'    The  long  i  (which  has  really  the 
sound  of  ai)  is  the  record  in  modern  English  of  the 
change  in  this  word,  also  in  shine,  drive,  smite,  bite, 
rise,  &c.     A  great  many  of  the  changes  of  vowel  in 
our  present  tenses  are  due  to  this  principle ;  but  our 
vowel   system  is  so   complex  that  we    cannot   enter 
further  on  the  question.     This  change  may  have  been 
caused  by  the  same  reason  as  the  first  one;  but  it 
may  originally  have  been  a  phonetic  one,  produced  by 
the  vowel  of  the  following  syllable  (cp.  Ch.  I.  31). 

(3)  By  inserting  different  suffixes  between  the 
root  and  the  personal  suffixes — such  as  na,  nu,  ta, 
ya ;  the  history  of  these  is  well  known  to  all  students 
of  Greek  and  Latin  ;  but  it  would  take  too  much  time 
to  describe  here.     Sometimes  an  n  (which  may  have 
been  a  suffix)  is  found  in  the  middle  of  the  root,  as 
in  pango  (root  pag)  mentioned  above ;  at  all  events 


86  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

its  effect  is  the  same.  This  is  seen  in  English  stand, 
compared  with  the  perfect  stood.  These  suffixes  are 
rare  in  Teutonic  speech ;  traces  are  left  in  English  of 
the  suffix  ya  (see  Ch.  IV.  12);  but  the  whole  of  the 
tenses  of  the  verb  were  affected  by  it,  not  merely  the 
present. 

7.  These   different   forms  of  the   '  present    base ' 
look,  as  I  have  said,  like  attempts  to  carry  out  the 
distinction,   which  is   a  very  important   one,   be- 
tween   momentary   and   continuous    action. 
But  to  carry  this  out  fully  there  ought  to  have  been 
a  present  of  each  kind ;  one  the  simple  root  (with 
personal  suffixes),  to  denote  the  momentary  action ; 
one  the  *  present  base/  to  express  continued  action. 
But  no  language,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  did  carry  this 
out   in    its   conjugations;   though   several   languages 
(ours,  as  we   have   seen),  could  express  it  by  peri- 
phrases.    The  distinction  is  most  marked  in  Greek, 
which  has  the  aorist  to  distinguish  momentary  action, 
but  only  in  the  past  tense.    Yet  this  past  tense  is  often 
used  as  a  momentary  present,  in  default  of  that  form ; 
and  the  continuous  present  is  given  by  such  phrases 
as  ekho  lexds  (literally  '  I  have,  having  told '  —  I  keep 
telling).     In  lego palai  =  '  I  tell  (and  have  told)  long 
ago/  the  continuous  present  is  further  expressed  by  an 
adverb  of  time. 

8.  Past  time  could  be  expressed  in  the  parent 
language   in   two   ways,  by  the  Augment  and   by 
Reduplication.     The  augment  was  a  word  consist- 
ing of  the  single  letter  a;  this  was  changed  to  e  in 
Greek.    Its  origin  cannot  be  stated  with  any  certainty; 
but  it  is  probable  that  it  was  a  demonstrative  pronoun, 
meaning  *  there ; '  *  I  do  a  thing  there '  implies  that  I 
am  not  doing  it  here  now,  and  so  may  come  to  express 
'  I  did  it.'    In  this  case  the  vowel  must  probably  have 
been    originally  long,   an    instrumental   case  of   the 
pronoun ;  and  there  is  no  doubt  that  it  was  first  used 
as  a  separate  word,  which  by  degrees  coalesced  with 


v.]  HOW  WORDS  ARE  PREPARED.  87 

the  verb.  Traces  of  the  older  use  are  to  be  seen  in 
Greek,  where  it  was  inserted  in  compound  verbs 
between  the  preposition  and  the  root ;  it  was  often 
omitted  altogether  in  Epic  Greek.  By  means  of  this 
suffix  two  tenses  were  formed  in  the  Indo-European 
language,  which,  in  the  forms  that  we  have  received, 
we  call  the  aorist  and  the  imperfect ;  their  suffixes 
are  shortened  from  those  attached  to  form  the  present, 
and  are  sometimes  called  secondary  suffixes  ;  this 
will  be  easily  seen  : — 

Primary  Suffixes. 
mi        si        ti  |         mas        tas        nti 

Secondary  Suffixes. 


Original.      m     s      t  \  I1"0        ta 

Greek  form,  n       s     — 


mas 
ma 
mes 
men 


te 


9.  The  shortened  suffixes  are  perhaps  a  compensa- 
tion for  the  increase  of  the  word  by  the  augment. 
By  the  aorist  was  expressed  momentary  action  in  past 
time,  as  e-lip-on  domon  —  '  I  left  a  house/  Here  we 
have,  as  we  should  expect,  the  simple  root  //)>,  denot- 
ing the  mere  action.  The  imperfect,  on  the  contrary, 
was  formed  from  the  present  base,  and  expressed 
continuous  action  in  the  past,  as  domon  e-leip-on  —  *  I 
was  leaving  a  house.7  These  examples  are  Greek; 
this  language  was  the  only  one  which  has  the  distinc- 
tion of  meaning  clearly  developed.  The  Asiatic 
languages  have  both  the  forms;  but  the  imperfect 
does  not  seem  to  be  much  more  than  an  ordinary  past 
tense.  The  Latin  has  no  aorist,  and  its  imperfect  is 
a  form  peculiar  to  itself;  but  the  imperfect  and  perfect 
are  distinct  in  use.  The  Teutonic  languages  have 
neither  aorist  nor  imperfect  (except  by  periphrasis). 
We  are  not  of  course  entitled  to  say  that  these  two 
forms  were  first  struck  out  to  distinguish  momentary 
from  continuous  action ;  they  may  have  originated  in 


88  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

phonetic  differences.  But  if  so,  this  speaks  even 
more  for  the  subtle  genius  of  the  Greek  race,  that  they 
alone  consistently  put  the  distinction  to  a  good  use. 

10.  It  may  perhaps  surprise  us  that  reduplication 
should  be  used  not  merely  to  express  (as  we  have 
already   seen  in  the  present  tense)  continuous  and 
repeated  action,  and  desire  for  action,  but  also  some- 
thing more ;  for  it  was  also  used  to  express  past  action, 
and  (in  Greek  at  least)  completed  action  in  the  past ; 
thus  domon  le-loip-a  could  mean  *  I  have  left  a  house 
once  for  all.'     Yet  this  should  not  really  surprise  us ; 
the  needs  of  thought  are  many,  the  material  of  lan- 
guage comparatively  small ;  and  no  one  who  is  ac- 
quainted with  the  many  different  uses  to  which  a  single 
case  of  a  pronoun  (such  as  that  in  English,  /ids  in 
Greek,    or  quo  in   Latin)  has   often   been   put,    will 
wonder  at  this  use  of  reduplication,  which,  though  a 
somewhat  cumbrous,  is  a  very  natural  method  of  in- 
tensifying the  expression  of  a  thought ;  and  is  extremely 
common  in  the  languages  of  savage  nations. 

1 1.  The  perfect  was   formed  by  reduplication   in 
Sanskrit,  Zend,  Greek,    Latin,  and    specially  in    the 
Teutonic  languages,  which  had  no  other  simple  method 
of  expressing  past  time.     In   Sanskrit,    Gothic,  and 
Greek  there  is  also  a  change  of  the  root-vowel  in  the 
singular  of  some  verbs.     The  nature  of  this  is  disput- 
able ;  whether  it  was  produced  by  phonetic  causes,  or 
whether  it  was   intended   to  denote  the   completed 
action ;  at  all  events,  it  may  have  been  used  for  that 
purpose,  even  though  it  arose  otherwise.     In  Latin 
the  reduplicated  Syllable  has  often  been  lost,  as  in 
/////;  sometimes,  as  in  words  like  cepi  (root  cap\  we 
find  a  vowel  change,  which  may  be  the  result  of  a 
contraction  of  the  two  syllables.     In  Gothic  we  find 
sometimes  an  apparent  intensification  of  the  redupli- 
cated syllable.     Thus,  from  haldan  (to  hold},  there  is 
a    perfect   hai-hald ;   where,    though    the    concluding 
consonants  have  been  dropped,  the  vowel  is  certainly 


v.]  NOW  WORDS  ARE  PREPARED.  89 

strengthened  ;  the  vowels  of  the  two  syllables  are  seen 
in  the  Old  High-German  hialt,  and  the  Old  English 
heold. 

12.  It   should   be   noticed    that    this   reduplicated 
*  perfect'  is  really  present  in  sense.     This  you  may 
easily  perceive  by  the  equivalents  in  our  analytical 
language ;  'I  have  come'  or  '  I  am  come'  are  identical 
in  meaning ;  as  the  Athenians  saw  when  they  con- 
jugated htko  (I  am  come)  with  the    suffixes  of  the 
present  tense ;  and  the  Dorians  had  a  whole  class  of 
such   perfect-presents.      We   might   therefore   rightly 
enough  call  such  perfects  (as  distinguished  from  the 
Teutonic  perfects,  which  denote  the  momentary  past 
as  well)  presents  of  the  completed  action ;  and  the 
past  of  that  grade  is  to  be  found  in   the   tense  to 
which  grammarians  gave  the  mysterious  title  of  the 
'more  than  perfect/     But  these  were  not  generally 
formed  immediately  from  the  reduplicated  root,  they 
were  '  compound '  tenses,  as  we  shall  soon  see.     Yet 
there  were  a  few  simple  pluperfects  in  old  Greek,  as 
e-me-mek-oji  in  the  Odyssey.     The   completed   action 
had  also  its  future  among  the  compound  tenses.     So 
Greek  in  this  respect  also  was  far  richer  than  its  sister 
languages.    Latin,  however,  also  had  its  future- perfect, 
as  we  shall  see. 

13.  All  these  tenses  which  I  have  described  are 
simple    tenses,   i.e.   they  are    formed   directly 
from  the  root  (unchanged  or  slightly  modified) 
with  the  suffixes,  the  only  other  element  being  the 
short  vowel  which  commonly  joins  the  two  together. 
This  is  either  the  final  vowel  of  a '  present  base ;  or, 
perhaps  more  commonly,  it  is  the  slight  vowel  sound 
necessary  to  make   the  compound   easier  when   the 
root  ends  with  a  mute  consonant ;    thus  it  was  not 
easy  to  say  reg-s,  reg-t,  though  there  was  no  difficulty 
in  saying  fer-s,  fer-t,  or  vol-t,  or  es-t ;  and  probably 
for  this  reason  the  Latins  said  reg-i-s,  reg-i-t,  where 
the  ( binding  vowel/  as  it  is  sometimes  called,  makes 


90  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

the  words   pronounceable,  but  adds  nothing  to  the 
meaning. 

14.  Compound  tenses  insert  some  formative 
suffix    between    the   root   and  the   personal 
suffix,  for  the  clearer  expression  of  the  time  at  which 
the  thing  is  done.     The  original  form  of  the  future 
is  an  instance  of  this.     The  suffix  was  sya,  which  is 
found  in  various  forms  in  all  the  divided  languages 
except  the  Teutonic.     It  is  supposed  that  this  is  short 
for  as-ya;  doubtful  traces  of  the  fuller  form  exist  in 
Greek;  as-ya  would  mean  'be-go,'  and  (a)sydmi  (the 
formative  and  personal  suffix  together)  '  I  go  to  be/ 
You  can  make  a  future  in  English  by  saying,  *  I  am 
going  to  do  it,'  and  one  has  heard  '  I  am  going  to  go.1 
Another  compound  tense  is  a  second  aorist  form 
(called  unluckily  the  «  first '  in  Greek) ;  this  is 
supposed  to  be  formed  in  like  manner  by  adding  a 
past  tense  of  the  verb  to  be,  viz.  as-a,  though  the  only 
form  which  is  found  is  -sa.     This,  like  so  many  other 
tenses,  is  best  developed  in  Sanskrit  and  Greek  ;  but 
in  Sanskrit,  though  there  are  several  forms,  their  use 
is  slight — at  least  in  the  classical  period  ;  in  Greek 
there  is  but  one  form,  if  we  except  a  few  Homeric 
relics  of  another,  such  as  ik-son,  not  ik-sa  from  root  ik; 
each  is  a  corruption  from  a  supposed  original  ik-sam(i). 
But  this  one  compound  Greek  form  is  in  constant  use. 
It  has  not  superseded  the  older  simple  form,  and  no 
verb  has  both  in  use  together,  except  a  few  in  which 
the  new  form  has  got  a  transitive  sense,  the  older 
remaining  intransitive.      By  our  analysis   this  aorist 
meant  originally  *T  was  to  do.' 

15.  These  tenses,  whether  simple  or  compound, 
existed  before  the  parting  of  the  languages, 
as  they  can  be  traced  back  to  the  primitive  speech. 
They   show   strikingly   the   advance   in   grammatical 
expression  which  our  forefathers  had  made.     Many 
others  were  struck  out  by  the  different  nations 
after  their  separation.    Thus  the  Greeks  formed 


v.]  HOW  WORDS  ARE  PREPARED.  91 

their  perfect  in  '  ka,'  erroneously  distinguished  in 
old  grammars  from  the  older  form  as  ' active*  from 
1  middle;'  there  is  no  such  difference  of  meaning, 
but  the  compound  form  nearly  superseded  the  old 
one ;  so  did  their  pluperfect,  which  was  formed  from 
the  reduplicated  root  by  the  same  tense  as  the  aorist 
-sa,  but  in  the  fuller  form  -esa;  this  became  -ea,  as 
we  have  it  in  Homer,  e.g.  e-pe-poith-ea :  they  also  con- 
structed two  passive  aorists  and  two  futures, 
but,  as  in  the  active,  each  verb  really  used  but  one. 
They  had  also  a  third  passive  future — of  the 
completed  action — formed  by  adding  the  usual  suffix 
to  the  perfect  base;  this  future  the  grammarians 
dignified  by  the  name  of  '  paulo-post.'  The  Latins 
formed  their  perfects  in  si  and  ui,  their  pluperfect 
in  -cram,  which  is  really  identical  with  the  Greek  form 
as  it  stands  for  esa-m(i) ;  their  future  of  the  com- 
pleted action,  already  mentioned,  by  adding  -so  to  the 
perfect  base  :  thus  ceptro  =  cepi-so^  and  also  formations 
more  specially  their  own,  the  imperfect  in  -bam,  and 
the  future  in  -bo.  There  is  no  reason  to  doubt  that 
these  are  divergent  forms  of  the  present  of  the  root 
bhu  '-to  be/  so  that  amabam  by  the  help  of  the  final 
m  signified  '  I  was  to  love/  and  amabo  is  *  I  am  to 
love ; '  the  sense,  therefore,  is  just  the  same  as  the 
Greek  aorist  and  future,  but  the  roots  of  the  auxiliary 
verb  are  different. 

1 6.  More  specially  interesting  to  us  is  the  formation 
of  the  Teutonic  perfect  in  those  verbs  which  do  not 
use  reduplication.  Such  verbs  are  commonly  called 
in  consequence  weak  verbs,  as  being  obliged  to  use 
external  help  instead  of  expressing  the  idea  by  some 
modification  of  their  own  resources  ;  strong  verbs  do 
this  by  reduplication  or  vowel  change.  These  weak 
verbs  add  to  the  base  the  perfect  of  the  verb  '  to  do  ; ' 
this  would  be  in  Gothic  da,  and,  reduplicated,  dada, 
weakened  to  dida;  this  was  further  corrupted  in  the 
singular  by  the  loss  of  the  first  syllable,  but  the 


92  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

plural  shows  the  original  form  very  clearly ;  thus  from 
the  root  lag  (to  lay)  we  have  the  perfect : 

Singtilar lag-i-da,  lag-i-des,  lag-i-da. 

Plural lag-i-dedum,  lag-i-deduth,  lag-i-dedun. 

We  have  of  course  corrupted  much  of  this  in 
English,  more  especially  the  plural,  which  certainly 
would  not  now  tell  the  tale  of  its  origin  as  the  Gothic 
plural  unmistakably  does.  Yet  the  second  person 
singular  has  been  preserved  to  us  through  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  in  a  fuller  form  than  even  the  Gothic.  Instead 
of  lag-i-des  we  have  lai-dest ;  the  s  probably  represents 
the  second  d  of  ded,  which  was  changed  into  s  before 
the  /  in  a  supposed  earlier  form  dcd-ta;  the  Gothic 
made  the  same  change,  but  let  the  /  drop  for  euphony ; 
the  English  has  no  loss  beyond  the  final  vowel. 

17.  It  will  be  seen  that  the  general  sense  of  these 
compound  tenses  is  parallel  to  that  of  the  formations 
of  modern  analytical  languages.     Thus  ama-bo,  '  I  am 
to  love,'  is  cognate  to  French  aimer-ai, '  I  have  to  love/ 
But  there  is  a  difference  in  the  principle  of  the  forma- 
tion :  in  ama-bo  the  bo  is  added  directly  to  the  root ; 
it  is  technically  an  agglutinative  compound,  which  has 
passed  into  an  inflected  word.     But  aimer-ai  is  made 
up  of  two  actual  words  (see  Ch.  II.  2).     Therefore, 
although  the  last  syllable  in  this  particular  use  has  lost 
its  meaning  as  fully  as  bo  did,  yet  the  whole  word  is 
a  compound  of  a  different  period.     It  is,  of  course, 
open  to  any  one  to  believe  that  ama-bo  was  at  first 
amare-fuo,  in  which  case   it  would  be  of  the  same 
class  as  aimer-ai.     But  there  is  no  trace  in  grammar 
of  such  a  lost  syllable. 

1 8.  But  there  are  other  things  about  the  verb  which 
must   be    noted.      We   have   seen   how  verbs   have 
*  persons '  and  '  tenses/  the  latter  apparently  formed 
by  composition  with  other  verbs  of  a  general  sense, 
'  to  have '  or  '  to  be/  which  become  mere  auxiliaries, 
and  are  often  incorporated  into  the  main  verb.     But 


v.]  HOW  WORDS  ARE  PREPARED.  93 

verbs  also  have  moods — a  distinction  found  in 
all  our  languages,  but  very  differently  developed.  A 
*  mood '  is  the  '  mode  '  or  manner  in  which  an  action 
may  be  regarded.  These  may  be  very  many,  and  the 
oldest  grammarians  of  Greece  distinguished  several, 
for  which  their  language  gave  no  special  form  of 
expression.  But  those  for  which  tfyere  have  been 
different  forms  in  use  are  : — 

19.  (i)  The  simple  action,  done,  doing,  or  to  be 
done  :  to  express  which  the  root  or  base  suffices,  in 
the  appropriate   '  tense/  past,  present,  or  future,  and 
with  the  necessary  suffixes  to  express  the  personality 
of  the  actor.     This  *  mode  '  is  called  the  Indicative  ; 
the  simple  statement. 

20.  (ii)  The   action,  not  simply  stated,  but 
brought  immediately  before  some  other  per- 
son, commonly  as  a  command  or  a  request. 
For  this  purpose  personal  suffixes  may  be  used  ;  but 
in  the  direct  address  to  a  second  person  the  suffix  is 
not  needed  for  clearness,  and  is  commonly  dropped, 
or  else  reduced  to  the  shortest  possible  form.     This 
mood  is  the  Imperative. 

21.  (Hi)  The   action    not   stated  as   a   fact, 
though  it  may  be  one ;  but  as  a  conception 
of  the  mind  ;  for  example  as  a  wish,  a  condition  not 
necessarily  existent,  but  possible,  a  result  or  an  object 
of  some  other  action,  &c.     This  mood  is  called  the 
Subjunctive.     The  name,  as  usual,  denotes  more 
especially  one  use  of  the  mood ;  that  in  which  the 
action  is  dependent  upon  another  action,  and  not  stated 
directly.     But  it  is  not  necessary  that  it  should  be  used 
so.     The  subjunctive  may  be  used  in  a  direct  state- 
ment :  e.g.  l  quid  dicam/  =  *  what  am  I  to  be  conceived 
of  as  saying  ?  ' — not  '  am  actually  saying ; '  and  this 
use  is  commonest  in  the  older  stages  of  a  language,  as 
may  be  seen  plainly  enough  in  Greek,  by  comparison 
of  the  Epic  with  the  Attic  syntax.     It  is  not  neces- 
sary that  a  language  should  have  but  one  form  for  this 


94  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

conceptual  expression ;  in  Indo-European  there  were 
certainly  two,  traces  of  which  survive  in  many  of  the 
derived  languages. 

22.  It  is  in  Greek  that  this  double  use  has  been 
most  fully  developed,  and  while  the  simpler  form  had 
the  name  *  hypotaktike '  (subjunctive),  the  other  was 
called  the  'euktike'  (optative).  This  second  name 
arose  from  the  fact  that  when  used  in  Attic  syntax 
(without  the  particle  an}  in  a  direct  statement,  it 
nearly  always  expressed  a  wish;  *  might  this  thing  be 
so  ! '  very  much  as  we  might  say  in  English.  But  as 
I  have  already  said  of  the  subjunctive,  in  the  earlier 
Greek  the  optative  could  be  used  in  the  direct  state- 
ment of  a  conceivable  thing,  and  there  is  no  very 
apparent  difference  of  meaning  between  the  two 
moods  when  used  together.  Thus  in  the  Odyssey  we 
are  told  '  this  is  the  way  of  Zeus-reared  kings ;  he 
may  hate  (subjunctive)  one  man  out  of  mankind,  one 
belike  he  might  love  (optative).'  It  does  not  appear 
that  one  alternative  is  regarded  as  being  more  probable 
than  the  other ;  perhaps  one  statement  is  a  little  more 
vivid  than  the  other ;  but  there  is  hardly  more  real 
difference  between  them  than  there  is  between  the 
English  equivalents.  It  has  been  suggested  that, 
when  the  two  moods  are  used  consecutively  in  subor- 
dinate clauses,  the  optative  expresses  a  more  remote 
contingency ;  in  fact,  that  the  optative  stands  to  the 
subjunctive  as  the  subjunctive  does  to  the  indicative ; 
this  would  have  been  very  natural,  and  the  primary 
use  may  have  been  of  this  sort ;  but  later  usage  con- 
tradicts as  often  as  it  supports  the  theory.  It  is 
certainly  a  fact  that  the  optative  is  used  to  express  the 
object  or  result  of  something  already  done ;  whilst  the 
subjunctive  expresses  those  of  something  doing  or 
about  to  be  done ;  and  there  is  some  connection  in 
form  between  the  tenses  of  the  optative  and  the  past 
tenses  of  the  indicative.  These  facts  are  not  at 
variance  with  the  theory  that  the  optative  denotes  a 


v.]  HOW  WORDS  ARE  PREPARED.  95 

more  remote  contingency  than  the  subjunctive.  But 
there  is  nothing  in  the  forms  of  the  moods,  and 
nothing  conclusive  in  their  use,  to  prove  that  theory. 

23.  The  suffixes  by  which  their  bases  were  formed 
from  the  present  base  of  the  verb  were  originally  a 
for  the  subjunctive,  ya  for  the  optative.     These  are 
found  in  different  forms   in    the   derived   languages. 
The  Latin  present  subjunctive  form  is  the  same  as  that 
of  the  Greek ;  the  imperfect  subjunctive  corresponds 
to  the  Greek  optative ;  thus  '  es-ya-mi '  is  the  original 
of  '  essem,  (es-ie-m)  in  Latin,  and  '  eien  ?  (es-ie-n)  in 
Greek.     The  rule  in  Latin  respecting  the  tenses  of  the 
subjunctive  in  dependent  sentences  corresponds  with 
the  rule  for  the  use  of  the  moods  in  Greek.     These 
are  the  chief  points  in  the  use  of  this  *  conceptual ' 
mood  in  its  two  forms ;  fuller  explanation  belongs  to 
the  special  grammars  of  the  two  languages.     There  is 
nothing  in  the  forms  a  and  ya  which  serves  to  prove 
the  original  meaning  of  the  moods  ;  perhaps  they  were 
pronominal   roots,   like   the  a   of  the   augment,    but 
joined  on  after  the  base  instead  of  before  it.     Some 
hold  that  they  were  verbs,  and  that  ya  meant  'to  go/ 
This  is  less  likely. 

24.  (iv)  The  so-called  infinitive  mood  is  histori- 
cally no  mood  at  all,  being,  as  we   shall  see,  really 
a  case  of  a  noun  ;   sometimes  a  dative  or  locative, 
sometimes  an  accusative,  as  in  Sanskrit.     The  Latin 
supine  (whose  use  is  nearly  identical  with  the  infinitive) 
is  also  an  accusative. 

25.  Lastly,  I  must  say  a  few  words  on  the  so-called 
voices  of  the  verbs.     We  are  all  familiar  with  the 
difference    between    active    and    passive    verbs ; 
synthetic    languages   have    special    terminations   for 
each,  and  the  distinction  seems  to  us  a  most  elemen- 
tary one.     Yet  it  is  tolerably  certain  that  it  grew  out 
of  another,  and  at   first   sight  much   less   necessary 
one.     In  Greek  the  passive  is  to  a  great  extent 
identical  with  another  voice,  which  the  Greek 

7*  9  ' 


96  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

grammarians  conceived  of  as  standing  between  the 
active  and  passive,  and  therefore  called  the  middle 
voice.  Now  a  comparison  of  Greek  and  Sanskrit 
leaves  little  room  to  doubt  that  the  middle  forms  are 
tne  older,  that  they  were  formed  to  express  an  action 
directed  not  towards  another  person,  but  the 
agent ;  not  '  I  love  another/  but  1 1  love  myself.1 
This  is  one  of  the  senses  of  the  Greek  middle  verb, 
and  the  Sanskrit  names  for  the  two  sets  of  forms, 
*  words  for  another '  and  *  words  for  myself.'  curiously 
attest  the  fact.  We  should  naturally  expect  those 
verbs,  whose  sense  is  specially  reflexive,  to  be  con- 
jugated only  in  the  middle  voice;  and  some  verbs  are 
so  conjugated  both  in  Sanskrit  and  in  Greek,  some- 
times without  any  very  apparent  reason.  There  is  no 
great  agreement  between  the  two  languages  in  this 
respect  :  thus  labh  (to  take)  is  declined  only  in  the 
middle  in  Sanskrit,  but  the  sense  is  quite  that  of  an 
active  verb;  in  Greek,  lambano,  the  active  is  as  common 
as  the  middle,  and  the  difference  of  sense  is  generally 
marked  ;  but  such  distinctions  are  not  likely  to  be 
made  always  the  same  by  different  peoples.  The 
Greek  language  is  remarkable  for  the  skill  with  which 
slightly  different  shades  of  meaning  can  be  marked  by 
this  voice. 

26.  Then,  when  the  middle  voice  had  given  an 
expression  for  '  being  acted  upon,'  though  only  by 
oneself,  it  was  natural  to  utilise  the  same  form  for  the 
more  common  kind  of  being  acted  upon,  viz.,  by 
another.  This  was  done  regularly  in  Greek;  the 
same  forms  served  for  middle  or  passive  use ;  but  a 
considerable  number  of  compound  forms  was  after- 
wards added  specially  to  each  voice.  In  Latin  the 
middle  was  converted  into  the  passive,  the  original 
sense  passing  away:  but  the  older  use  remained  very 
distinct  in  a  number  of  verbs  which  did  not  become 
passive  at  all :  such  as  vescor  (I  feed  myself),  utor  (I 
employ  myself),  reminiscor  (I  call  back  to  my  mind), 


v.] 


HOW  WORDS  ARE  PREPARED. 


97 


and  many  other  common  verbs  which  the  grammarians 
unluckily  called  '  deponents,'  in  the  mistaken  notion 
that  they  •  laid  down '  that  passive  sense  which,  as  a 
fact,  they  never  had,  being  really  reflexive  verbs  from 
the  beginning.  In  Sanskrit  the  passive  was  a  new 
base  formed  by  the  suffix  ya;  the  meaning  of  this  is 
doubtful ;  the  common  explanation  that  it  is  the  root 
'  to  go,'  (so  that,  for  example,  labh-ya-te  should  get  to 
mean  '  is  taken/  through  '  take-go-it-itself ')  does  not 
greatly  commend  itself;  be  this  as  it  may,  to  this  new 
base  the  suffixes  of  the  reflexive  voice  were  then 
added.  In  form  these  suffixes  correspond  closely  in 
Sanskrit  and  in  Greek ;  they  are  (omitting  the  duals) 


Primary. 

Sanskrit.. 

i 

se 

te 

mahe 

dhwe 

Greek  

mai 

sai 

tai 

metha 

sthe 

nte 
ntai 
Secondary* 

Sanskrit..        i          thas     ta        mahi         dhwam     nta 
Greek men  so        to        metha      sthe          nto 

27.  The  Greek  has  preserved  the  oldest  attainable 
forms  for  the  singular  in  mai,  sai,  tai  :  and  that  they 
are  modified  in  some  principle  from  the  active  mi,  si, 
ti,  is  clear  enough.  But  it  is  not  easy  to  see  how! 
One  supposition  that  mai  =  <  ma  +  mi/  so  that  the 
pronoun  is  doubted  to  express  the  reflexive  action,  is 
not  a  bad  one  :  and  it  is  supported  by  the  secondary 
form  men  which  points  to  original  mam.  It  is  also 
possible  that  the  difference  in  meaning  was  at  first 
conveyed  merely  by  lengthening  the  vowel,  so  that 
'mi'  became  'mi/  then  by  the  general  tendency  of 
long  vowels  to  become  diphthongs  I  (ee-sound)  may 
have  passed  into  ai ;  compare  our  possessive  pronoun, 
now  written  mine  (pronounced  main),  but  originally 
written  min,  and  pronounced  meen. 


98  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

28.  The  Latin  (with  which  the  Keltic  agrees  very 
remarkably)  attained  the  same  result  in  a  very  different 
way.  It  simply  added  the  reflexive  pronoun  se  to 
the  active  verb :  thus  amat  se  is  '  he  loves  self ; '  the 
two  words  (joined  with  a  connecting  vowel)  became 
a  mat  use,  by  loss  of  the  final  vowel  amatus,  and,  by 
change  of  s  into  r,  amatur  ;  just  as  arbos  passed  into 
arbor,  and  many  others  likewise.  This  same  *  se,'  in 
the  form  s  or  r,  was  then  used  for  other  persons  as 
well,  conveying  the  general  idea  'self/  and  so  amo 
became  amor,  amas  became  amas-i-s  or  amaris,  &c. 
This  explanation  of  the  Latin  forms  is  rendered  fairly 
certain  by  the  fact  that  in  Lithuanian  the  same  process 
is  found,  but  the  pronoun  has  not  become  permanently 
fixed  to  the  end  of  the  verb  but  is  sometimes  used 
between  it  and  a  prefix  :  as  though  you  could  say  in 
Latin  trans-se-veho  in  the  sense  .of  and  instead  of 
transveho-t. 

The  Icelandic  reflexive  verbs  also  throw  light  on 
this  formation.  These  verbs  take  the  suffix  -sk  short 
for  sik  (=  oneself)  and  -mk,  only  used  in  the  first 
person,  for  mik  (=  me):  thus  elska  =  I  love;  thau 
elska-sk  'they  love  one  another;'  ek  thykkir  and  ek 
thykkju-mk  both  mean  *  I  seem.'  So  too  the  O.  E. 
busk  (I  eel.  by-sk)  is  to  make  oneself  ready;  remember 
the  old  song, 

'*'  Busk  ye,  busk  ye,  my  bonuie  bonnie  bride," 

and  to  'bask'  is  either  to  'bathe  self '  or  to  'bake 
self.' 

29.  We  have  thus  seen  something  of  the  curious 
and  complex  machinery  by  which  the  verb  has  been 
built  up  in  one  family  of  languages.  We  have  next  to 
consider  the  formation  of  the  noun  :  how  the  base 
could  be  so  modified  as  to  make  the  important  dis- 
tinction between  the  subject  and  the  object  of  an 
action,  and  to  express  some  at  least  of  the  circum- 
stances under  which  an  action  is  performed.  In  the 


V.J  HO  W  WORDS  ARE  PREPARED.  99 

earliest  stages  of  the  languages  which  we  are  describing, 
we  find  the  suffix ;//  mostly  used  to  indicate  the  object  \ 
or,  if  we  use  the  terminology  of  grammar,  to  form  the 
accusative  case;  sometimes  however  in  neuter 
nouns  the  base  alone  was  used.  The  nominative 
case  was  marked  by  s,  when  the  agent  was  masculine, 
and  sometimes  also  in  feminine  nouns ;  but  more  com- 
monly these  were  expressed  by  different  bases  which 
perhaps  had  no  special  case-suffix ;  in  neuter  nouns  the 
form  was  the  same  as  that  of  the  accusative.  This 
variation  in  use  makes  it  probable  that  the  suffixes 
were  not  first  employed  to  express  the  relation  of 
subject  and  object :  nay,  the  absence  of  any  suffix  in 
some  nouns  seems  to  point  back  to  an  earlier  usage 
when  bases  alone  were  used  without  any  case-sign,  as 
in  modern  English ;  and  the  order  of  the  words,  or  the 
general  sense  of  the  passage,  was  the  only  method  of 
showing  which  was  subject,  which  was  object.  It  is 
likely  that  the  m  was  first  of  all  a  pronoun  added  to  the 
noun  to  emphasise  it ;  just  as  you  may  hear  in  every 
day  unlettered  speech ;  '  so  John,  he  says  to  me  ; '  that 
indeed  is  a  nominative,  and  is  more  exactly  parallel  to 
the  s  of  'Gaiu-s*  &c.,  but  the  principle  is  the  same  in 
both,  for  this  s  was  probably  the  pronoun  '  he/  and 
marked  the  masculine  gender ;  so  that  Gaiu-s  is  just 
'John-he.'  Then  by  the  play  of  fancy  gender  was 
attributed  to  many  a  thing  which  had  no  life ;  as  by 
sailors  to  their  ships  in  our  own  English  ;  and  other 
nouns  were  declined  as  feminines  because  of  simi- 
larity of  termination,  and  for  other  causes  not  easy 
to  determine. 

30.  We  may  see  here  that  gender  is  no  na- 
tural distinction  in  language  :  feminine  nouns 
were  originally  nothing  but  a  class  of  nouns  with  a 
different  termination,  in  fact  a  special  base  :  whereas 
masculine  and  neuter  nouns  were  formed  from  one 
common  base,  and  differ  only  in  the  nominatives,  and 
in  the  plural  nominatives  and  accusatives.  So,  if  we 


loo  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

decline,  bonus,  bona,  bonum,  we  must  remember  that 
bona  is  not  an  inflection  of  the  masculine  base,  as 
boni  the  genitive  is ;  there  is  a  base  bono  from  which 
is  formed  the  masc.  bonus  (originally  bono-s)  and  the 
neuter  bonum  (bono-ni)\  and  another  distinct  base  bond 
from  which  the  nom.  bona  is  shortened,  and  bonae 
(bond-i)  is  formed  :  and  this  by  use  became  restricted 
to  goodness  in  a  woman. 

31.  The  first  meaning  then  of  the  nominative  and 
the  accusative  was  probably  quite  vague;  and  it  is 
not  likely  that  they  were  invented  to  meet  any  logical 
want.     But  whatever  their  origin    was,   there    is  no 
doubt  that  they  were  early  used  to    express 
that   distinction  in  thought   which    we    call 
subject  and  object.     Sometimes  indeed  they  are 
called  the  subjective  and  objective  cases  :and  as  mere 
names  these  would  do  just  as  well  as   any  others  to 
distinguish  the  different  forms.   Bat  as  we  have  seen,  it 
must  not  be  supposed  that  the  forms  are   necessarily 
identical  with  these  uses,  if  only  because  one  form — 
that  in  -;/*  can  be  used  for  br>th,  e.g.  '  monstruw  incolit 
antru;//.'     It  is  very  likely  that  these  two    cases, 
with  the  vocative  (which,  as  we  have  already   said, 
is  the  mere  base,  used  in  calling  on  a  person  but   not 
putting  him  into  any  relation    with    anything    else), 
were  older  than  the  other  cases  :  first,  because 
they  were  the  m:>st  necessary ;  secondly,  because  they 
are  found  in  all  the  Aryan  languages,  whereas  other 
cases  are  only  found  in  some  ;  thirdly,  because  they 
never  interchange  in  form  with  any  of  the  others. 

32.  It  is  not  easy  to  say  which  of  the  other  cases 
came  next  in  time  ;  if  we  may  infer  (i)  from  the  extent 
to  which  they  occur  in  the  different  languages  and  (2) 
from  the  amount  of  agreement  in  their  use,  we  should 
place  the  genitive  ;  which  had  originally  two  forms, 
as   (cp.   Latin  ei-us)  and  sya  (cp.  Sanskrit  fiva-sya) ; 
the  nearest  form  in  Greek  is  seen  in  demo-io.     The 
origin  of  neither  of  these  forms  is  known  :  the  latter 


V.]  HOW  WORDS  ARE  PREPARED.  101 

one  is  very  like  an  adjective-base ;  whence  it  has 
been  conjectured  that  these  are  identical ;  but  no 
proof  of  this  seems  possible,  though  the  uses  are  very 
parallel.  In  some  languages,  the  relative  pronoun  can 
be  used  to  denote  the  same  idea  :  thus,  '  the  house 
which  the  man '  is  equivalent  to  '  the  house  of  the 
man  ; '  and  if  the  element  denoting  '  which '  were 
added  to  '  man  '  this  would  be  a  strict  '  case  ?  in  our 
sense  of  the  word.  But  though  these  (and  others)  are 
actual  methods  in  which  the  genitive  relation  has  been 
expressed,  we  must  not  conclude  that  these  particular 
suffixes  as  and  sya  are  necessarily  to  be  so  derived. 
The  simplest  use  of  the  genitive  is  to  express  any 
kind  of  relation  between  itself  and  another 
noun,  as  '  John's  house,*  *  man  of  the  town.'  This 
general  sense  can  be  subdivided  into  a  great  many 
special  and  seemingly  opposite  uses :  thus  timor 
Romanorum  in  Latin  can  mean  the  fear  of  the  Romans 
felt  by  somebody  else,  or  the  fear  of  somebody  else 
felt  by  the  Romans  :  and  these  two  uses  are  very 
properly  classed  in  grammars  respectively  as  the 
objective  and  the  subjective  use  of  the  genitive ;  be- 
cause you  might  state  them  as  (i)  'aliquis  timet 
Romanes  '  some  one  fears  the  Romans  (object),  or  (2) 
'Roman!  timent  aliquem '  the  Romans  (subject)  fear 
some  one  :  but  neither  of  these  meanings  is  really 
inherent  in  the  genitive  itself;  each  is  infused  into  the 
genitive  by  the  intelligence  of  the  hearer. 

33.  There  are  several  other  uses  of  this  case  which 
are  very  old  because  they  are  found  in  every  language  ; 
as  the  partitive  use,  e.g.  '  many  of  the  Greeks/  where 
again  the  genitive  does  not  express  the  part ;  it 
only  implies  some  relation  between  'the  Greeks' 
and  '  many ; '  and  the  mind  supplies  the  necessary 
link  ;  the  possessive  use,  as  in  '  John's  book '  whence 
the  case  is  sometimes  called  the  possessive  case  in 
English  grammar;  which  must  not  blind  us  to  the  fact 
that  possession  is  only  one  meaning  of  the  case  and 


io±  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

that  a  derived  one.  In  some  languages,  more  especially 
in  Greek,  this  case  is  also  used  with  verbs — 
principally  verbs  which  express  touching  a  thing  or 
aiming  at  it ;  but  these  uses  are  secondary,  and  in 
Greek  probably  arise  partly  from  the  loss  of  other  cases, 
in  consequence  of  which  the  genitive  was  obliged  to  do 
other  work  as  well  as  its  own.  In  some  instances  the 
genitive  seems  to  be  used  when  the  verb  expresses 
taking  or  perceiving  only  certain  parts  or  qualities  of 
a  thing,  not  the  whole  thing  ;  so  that  it  is  the  same  in 
principle  as  when  the  genitive  with  a  noun  expresses 
the  thing  of  which  a  part  is  taken.  Generally  speaking 
the  genitive  is  to  a  noun  what  an  accusative  is  to  a 
verb ;  it  defines  further  the  meaning  of  the  word  to  which 
it  is  joined.  Obviously,  as  was  said  above,  this  use 
is  much  like  that  of  an  adjective  :  it  does  not  differ 
whether  you  say  '  hostium  metus '  or  l  hostilis  metus  ; ' 
though  a  further  meaning  may  often  attach  to  the 
adjectival  phrase,  e.g.  *  feline  spite' would  generally  be 
used  of  some  one  else  than  the  cat  itself. 

34.  Perhaps  the  next  two  cases  which  sprung  up 
were  the  locative  and  the  dative  :  they  are  much 
alike  in  form,  the  locative  suffix  being  /',  the  dative  ai: 
and  they  have  become  mixed  up  in  some  languages, 
especially  in  Greek;  indeed  in  all  Greek  nouns  whose 
base  ends  with  a  consonant,  or  in  /  or  u,  what  we  call 
the  dative  is  really  the  locative  ;  e.g.  paid  i  (base 
paid-}  ichthu-i  (base  ichthn-\  This  pair  of  cases,  or  the 
traces  of  them,  are  found  in  more  languages  than  the 
other  cases,  if  we  except  the  four  already  mentioned  : 
which  is  an  argument  for  their  greater  age  :  and  there 
is  more  agreemenr  both  in  their  form  and  use.  There 
is  no  doubc  that  the  original  meaning  of  the  locative 
was  '  in  a  place  ;  '  and  this  gives  some  colour  to  the 
conjecture  that  the  suffix  /  was  originally  the  preposi- 
tion in  (found  in  Latin),  so  that  oiko-i^  and  dom-i  meant 
originally  l  house-in/  But  the  prepositions  were  them- 
selves, generally,  cases  of  nouns,  as  we  shall  presently 


v.]  HOW  WORDS  ARE  PREPARED.  103 

see  :  so  that  we  should  be  arguing  in  a  circle  if  we  called 
a  preposition  a  case  of  a  noun,  and  then  explained  a 
case  as  formed  from  the  preposition.  Some  late  case- 
suffixes  indeed  might  be  prepositions  which  were 
themselves  other  and  older  cases.  But  the  locative  is 
too  old  a  case  to  be  explained  in  this  way.  Again,  if 
we  look  at  languages  like  the  Chinese  which  join  one 
whole  word  on  to  another  whole  word  to  express  by 
such  post-position  what  we  express  by  cases,  we 
should  infer  that  the  /  here  was  more  likely  to  be 
the  remainder  of  some  word  meaning  '  middle,'  '  in- 
terior '  or  the  like,  or  that  it  was  the  fag  end  of  a  verb 
denoting  '  being ; '  but  of  such  a  verb  there  is  no  trace. 
The  question  cannot  be  answered  with  any  kind  of 
certainty. 

35.  The  dative  looks  not  unlike  a  modification 
of  the  locative  form  :  and  some  of  the  dative  uses 
might  not  unnaturally  be  explained  from  the  earlier 
notion  of  the  place  in  which  :  e.g.  the  notion  '  to  a 
person*  might  be  explained  as  putting  a  thing  into 
the  hand  or  power  of  that  person.  By  a  contrary 
process  we  commonly  substitute  the  locative  for  the 
dative,  when  we  say,  *  where  (locative)  are  you  going  ? ' 
instead  of  '  whither '  or  '  to  what  place.'  This  may 
serve  to  show  the  close  connection  of  the  two  cases. 
But  an  ultimate  analysis  seems  to  point  to  bodily 
inclination  towards  an  object  as  the  primary 
meaning  of  the  dative  ;  which  would  therefore  not  be 
borrowed  from  the  locative.  The  regular  use  of  the 
locative  is  to  express  (i)  the  place  and  (2)  the  time 
in  which  a  thing  takes  place.  It  is  only  in  Sanskrit 
that  its  sphere  has  been  extended.  The  initial  meaning 
or'  the  dative  shows  its  adaptability  for  the  uses  to  which 
it  was  regularly  put — viz.  (i)  to  express  the  person  or 
thing  affected  by  an  action,  but  not  so  directly  as 
another  person  or  thing ;  and  called  in  grammar  the 
'  remoter  object : '  as  when  I  say  *  1  give  a  crown/ 
an  idea  which  is  incomplete  unless  I  add  '  to  some 


104  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

one:'  (2)  to  express  the  person  interested  in  the 
fact  stated  in  the  sentence  ;  just  as  we  might  say  in 
English  '  He  is  welcome,  for  me.'  The  verbs  with 
which  the  dative  is  found  in  the  first  use  are  much 
the  same  in  all  languages  :  they  express  such  ideas  as 
'  bending  '  '  inclining  '  *  giving/  *  showing  '  '  speaking  ' 
*  being  angry '  or  l  well  disposed  : '  and  you  may  see 
how  all  these  imply  some  bodily  (or  mental)  inclina- 
tion, but  not  motion  towards  a  thing.  The  second  class 
contains  the  well-known  Latin  use  which  has  the 
mysterious  name  of  the  ethical  dative ;  as  in  *  quid 
;;/////  Celsus  agit,'  *  I  wish  to  know  how  Celsus  is  : ' 
where  ///////  expresses  the  '  feeling,'  (Greek  ethos)  not 
the  morality,  (as  '  ethical '  now  suggests  to  us)  of  the 
speaker.  No  exact  line  can  be  drawn  between  the 
two  uses  ;  they  shade  into  each  other ;  but  roughly 
speaking,  in  the  first  the  dative  is  necessary  to  com- 
plete the  idea;  yet  not  always.  We  say  in  Latin 
'  irascpr  tibi '  =  I  am  angry  with  you ;  but  we  say 
also  simply  '  irascor  '  =  I  am  angry  :  in  the  second  use 
the  sentence  would  stand  entire  without  the  dative. 

36.  The  uses  of  the  dative  are  best  studied  in  the 
Latin ;  in  no  language  have  they  remained  more  un- 
mixed with  those  of  other  cases ;  the  Greek  dative  in 
this  respect  is  a  great  contrast,  as  it  has  had  the  loca- 
tive incorporated  with  it,  and  the  functions  of  the  in- 
strumental forced  upon  it.  One  well  known  Latin  use 
of  the  dative  is  to  express  the  purpose  of  an  action 
that  *  towards '  which  you  look  in  doing  it :  e.g.  in 
'  receptui  canit,'  the  retreat  is  the  purpose  of  the  signal : 
and  akin  to  this  is  the  use  of  the  dative,  mainly  with 
4est,'  denoting  a  result,  as  'exitio  est  mare  nautis ' 
Now  both  these  usages  are  found  in  the  old  Sanskrit 
of  the  Vedas  :  in  later  Sanskrit  the  dative  is  little 
used  except  for  the  "  purpose,"  its  more  obvious  duties 
having  fallen  to  other  cases.  No  other  language  has 
developed  these  last  uses  which  we  find  in  Sanskrit 
and  Latin ;  it  is  quite  sure  that  the  Hindus  did  not 


v.]  HOW  WORDS  ARE  PREPARED.  105 

borrow  them  from  the  Romans,  nor  the  Romans  from 
the  Hindus;  so  this  coincidence  curiously 
shows  the  great  antiquity  of  parts  of  our 
syntax  ;  for  this  usage  must  in  all  probability  have 
been  known  before  the  parting  of  the  Asiatic  and 
European  members  of  our  family.  In  Sanskrit,  the 
ordinary  uses  of  the  dative  have  been  taken  by  the 
genitive,  as  the  remoter  object,  and  others  :  or  by  the 
locative,  which  in  classical  Sanskrit  may  also  express 
the  manner  of  an  action,  a  use  properly  belonging  to 
the  instrumental. 

37.  This  exchange  of  uses  is  instructive;  cases  must 
necessarily  get  uses  not  their  own,  when  other  cases 
are  lost,  and  leave  work  for  the  survivors  to  do  ;  and 
such  loss   occurred  in   all   the  European  languages, 
particularly  in  the  Greek  and  in  the  Teutonic  group. 
But  there  may  be  confusion  even  without  this  loss. 
All  the   cases  remained   in   the   Sanskrit;  yet  their 
meanings  are  greatly  interchanged ;  but  their  forms 
are  not  so  much  alike  as  to  cause  confusion ;  indeed 
forms  may  be  identical   and  yet  distinguished  suffi- 
ciently in  use,  as  the  dative  and  ablative  in  Latin. 
But  even  without  identity  of  form,  the  general  simi- 
larity of  sense  may  cause  the  change  of  use :   it  may 
also  arise  from  desire  for  variety  of  expression,  as  I 
shall  point  out  later. 

38.  An  interesting   use  of  the  dative  (and  some- 
times of  the  locative  and  accusative)  is  that  which 
we  call  quite  wrongly  the  infinitive  mood.     Gram- 
marians  battled   long   over   this    strange    form,   but 
eventually  it  was  given  to  the  verb.     This,  however, 
was  wrong.     Scientific  etymology  has  shown  that  the 
infinitive  was  a  case  of  a  noun,  expressing,  as  the 
dative  can  express,  the  object  of  the  action.     I  have 
not  room  to  go  through  the  proofs  of  this,  and  show 
that  all  the  Greek  and  Latin  infinitives  were  cases  ;  as 
regere,  of  an  obsolete  noun  reges,  meaning  *  governing  ; ' 
or  dounai,  of  a  noun  davana  ( -  the  act  of  *  giving ') 


io6  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

which  is  actually  used  in  the  Vedas  in  the  dative 
davane-  to  give.  Literally,  then,  a  person  is  said  to 
be  *  toward  the  act  of  giving.'  The  English  prepo- 
sition shows  that  our  infinitive  4  to  give '  is  only  the 
analytical  equivalent  of  a  dative,  just  as  in  Latin  you 
could  say  '  ad  dandum  '  instead  of  *  dare  ; '  and  one  is 
as  much  a  case  as  the  other.  Indeed,  the  older  English 
form  ended  in  -en  or  -an.  You  would  find  given  or 
tuaiten  in  Chaucer ;  and  if  you  went  back  to  Anglo- 
Saxon  you  might  find  a  veritable  dative  gi/anne. 
This  infinitive  was  sometimes  (in  the  fifteenth  century) 
wrongly  spelt  with  the  termination  ing  or  i/ige,  and  so 
became  not  easy  to  distinguish  from  the  nouns  which 
end  in  ing  (original  ////<;,  as  hitntung  afterwards  ////;//- 
/>/(,»),  or  from  the  present  participles,  as  huntende^  also 
corrupted  into  hunting.  This  confusion  may  have 
given  currency  to  the  common  use  of  the  infinitive 
with  us  as  the  subject  of  a  sentence,  e.g.  'to  err  is 
human.'  This  use  was  developed  independently  in 
Latin,  as  'errare  est  hurnanum,'  and  still  more  in 
Greek,  where  the  infinitive  can  be  regularly  declined 
with  the  article  as  an  independent  base,  though  with- 
out suffixes. 

39.  Next  to  this  couple  of  cases  may  have  come 
the  ablative,  of  which  the  primary  meaning  was 
unquestionably  from  a  place.  But  we  find  traces 
of  more  than  one  form  used  to  express  this  idea,  viz. 
as  (the  same  as  one  genitive  form)  and  at,  probably 
also  dhas,  for  traces  of  this  are  found  in  both  Sanskrit 
and  Greek.  There  is  a  form  tus  in  Latin,  as  caditus, 
from  heaven.  The  commonest  form,  however,  in 
Latin  was  that  in  at,  changed  into  //,  as  caeiod.  In 
very  early  times  the  d  was  dropped  in  most  words, 
but  it  is  found  not  uncommonly  upon  inscriptions. 
The  only  trace  of  this  form  in  Greek  is  found  in  some 
adverbs,  ending  in  os  or  d ;  e.g.  houtos  or  houto ' :  but 
the  dhas  form  is  found  as  then,  in  oiko-then,  &c.  It 
had  passed  out  of  all  the  Teutonic  languages  before 


V.]  HOW  WORDS  ARE  PREPARED.  107 

they  had  any  literature;  it  is  possible,  indeed,  that  no 
such  case  existed  in  them.  It  is  improbable  that  the 
need  for  this  case  was  felt  long  before  the  separation 
of  the  languages.  If  it  had  been,  we  should  have  had 
some  one  paramount  form  traceable  in  all  or  nearly 
all  of  them,  as  we  do  find  in  the  other  and  older  cases. 
Yet  the  antiquity  of  the  case  is  shown  by  the  same 
form  occurring  in  Zend  and  Latin,  and  another  in 
Sanskrit  and  in  Greek ;  such  coincidences  cannot  be 
accidental. 

40.  The  first  conception  of  motion  from  a  place 
was  naturally  extended ;  the  case  came  also  to 
denote  origin — that  from  which  a  person  or  thing  was 
produced,  the  cause  from  which  a  thing  arose,  &c.  In 
Latin  it  also  denoted  the  instrument  (being  the 
nearest  in  sense  to  the  lost  instrumental  case)  by 
which  something  was  done ;  then  it  marked  the  agent, 
the  living  instrument  of  the  action.  But  the  distinc- 
tion was  felt,  and  was  as  a  rule  denoted  by  ab  for 
the  agent.  Yet  proper  names  were  still  occasionally 
used  without  ab,  where  the  instrumentality  was  all 
that  needed  tc  be  expressed,  e.g.  when  Horace  writes  to 
Augustus  'Scriberis  Vario/  Varius  shall  be  the  instru- 
ment to  tell  of  thee.  Next  it  denoted  the  manner 
of  the  action ;  between  the  manner  and  the  instru- 
ment it  is  often  impossible  to  draw  a  distinct  line. 
These  instrumental  uses  are  by  far  the  commonest, 
for  '  motion  from '  in  Latin  was  generally  further  de- 
noted by  a  preposition.  In  classical  Sanskrit  there 
is  the  same  loss  of  the  original  force  ;  we  generally 
find  a  periphrasis,  such  as  '  having  left  a  place/  instead 
of  the  simple  form  *  from  a  place/  Perhaps  the  most 
striking  derived  use  of  the  case  (and  one  found  before 
the  parting  of  the  languages)  is  the  expression  of 
comparison.  Thus  'melior  patr<?(^)'  in  Latin  is 
literally  l  better  starting  from  his  father/  who  is  thus 
the  starting-point  or  standard.  This  same  use  is 
found  in  Sanskrit,  and  also  in  Greek,  as  'kreisson 
10 


io8  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 


'  better  than  me  ;  '  but  this  in  ordinary 
Greek  would  be  emou  the  genitive  :  that  case  took 
most  of  the  functions  of  the  lost  ablative.  The  con- 
fusion between  the  two  cases  arises  partly  perhaps  from 
the  identity  of  one  form  for  each  (-as);  but  much  more 
from  the  close  approximation  of  some  of  the  usages, 
e.g.  the  partitive.  '  Many  of  the  Greeks  '  may  be 
regarded  as  *  many  taken  out  of  the  Greeks  ;  *  it  may 
also  be  looked  on  as  a  true  genitive  usage,  as  we  have 
already  explained  it.  Indeed  our  English  preposition 
of,  which  we  now  call  the  mark  of  the  genitive  case, 
is  nothing  but  the  equivalent  of  the  Latin  ab,  and  this 
points  rather  to  an  ablative  origin  ;  in  Anglo-Saxon 
it  is  followed  by  a  dative,  with  which  the  ablative  has 
coalesced.  Little  distinction  of  sense  now  remains 
in  English  between  this  analytical  form  and  the  true 
genitive  case  in  s. 

41.  Last  come  two  suffixes,  a  and  bhi,  which  are 
the  marks  of  that  which  is  commonly  called  the 
instrumental  case.  What  was  said  of  the  ablative 
forms  is  still  more  true  of  these  ;  they  are  still  less 
common  in  the  different  languages,  and  their  meaning 
is  much  less  definite,  e.g.,  bhi  only  occurs  in  the  plural 
in  Sanskrit,  with  the  further  suffix  s  ;  and  it  is  also  used 
with  another  suffix  -as,  to  express  both  the  dative  and 
ablative.  In  Latin  it  occurs  in  but  few  words  —  tibi  and 
sibi,  where  it  appears  as  a  dative,  ibi  and  ubi,  which 
are  locatives  at  least  in  use;  in  epic  Greek  it  is  found, 
but  the  distinctive  meaning  was  early  lost,  and  though 
when  used  alone  it  generally  expresses  the  means 
whereby  we  accomplish  an  action,  e.g.  bie-phi,  'with 
strength/  yet  it  is  also  used  with  prepositions  in  senses 
not  distinguishable  from  the  ablative,  genitive  or 
dative.  The  a-  form  is  found  regularly  in  Sanskrit,  but 
in  other  languages  can  be  only  traced  through 
a  few  adverbs.  In  Greek  we  have  hama,  tacha,  and 
others;  and  in  Old  English  we  fm&fortht  and  forhwi, 
in  which  tin  and  hwi  are  instrumentals  of  the  and  ivho. 


v.]  HOW  WORDS  ARE  PREPARED.  109 

Thus  in  the  old  version  of  the  looth  Psalm  you  may 
read  (though  often  wrongly  printed  as  two  words,  and 
as  a  question), 

"  Forwhy  (i.e.  because)  the  Lord  our  God  is  good." 

42.  There  is  some  trace  of  difference  of  meaning 
in    this   case.     It   could  express    the   person   *  with ' 
whom  you  go  (in  which  sense  the  case  is  sometimes 
called  the  sociative),  and  also  the  instrument  ;  with ' 
which  you  do  something  (the  pure  instrumental) ; 
and  if  there  had  been  more  time,  the  two  suffixes 
might  have  been  apportioned  to  these  different  usages. 
But,  indeed,  these  shade  into  each  other.     l  To  go 
with  a  man '  is  certainly  sociative,  l  to  strike  with  the 
sword '  is  certainly  instrumental ;  but  '  to  go  with  a 
ship '  or  '  with  a  car '  (nauphi  and  ochesphi  in  Greek) 
lie  near  the  border,  and  '  with  a  horse '  is  quite  upon 
the  boundary  line.    As  you  see,  the  English  with  does 
fairly  well   for   all.     It   was   formerly  used  with  the 
instrumental ;  as  '  with  thy  '  =  provided  that. 

43.  In  Latin  the  work  of  this  lost  case  was  done 
by   the    ablative,   with   which   (as  we  saw)    it  fairly 
suited.      There    is    little   doubt   that    the    so  called 
ablative  of  description  ('vir  magno  corpore'  =  a 
man  with  a  big  body),   is  really  of  this  kind ;    the 
instrumental   is   used   just   so  in  Lithuanian.      This 
language   has  kept   the   primary  double   usage    very 
clearly ;  it  has  also  some  peculiar  uses,  as  a  cognate 
instrumental,  just  like  the  accusative  in  Greek  and 
Latin,   and  a   predicative  use  with  verbs   of  being; 
compare  the  Latin  dative.     In  Sanskrit  also  the  use 
of  this  case  is  very  great ;  it  denotes  the  agent  (for 
which  both  Greek  and  Latin  need  a  preposition)  quite 
as  often  as  the   instrumental,  together  with  all  those 
uses  which  are  covered  by  the  Latin  ablative  sole 

44.  I  have  spoken  at  such  length  of  these  cases 
in   the  singular,   that   I    have  no  space  to  dwell  on 
the  plural   forms.     These  are   not  so   simple  as 


I io  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

the  singular  forms,  of  which  in  general  they  seem  to 
be  modifications,  made  by  adding  the  mark  of  plu- 
rality -s,  the  history  of  which  is  very  doubtful.  The 
dual  forms  are  apparently  later  modifications  of  the 
plural :  duality  is  only  one  rather  noteworthy  instance 
of  plurality.  There  are  not  so  many  distinct  forms  in 
the  plural.  The  dative  and  ablative  are  not  dis- 
tinguished ;  in  the  dual  the  instrumental  goes  with 
these,  and  the  genitive  coalesces  with  the  locative. 
This  is  hard  to  explain,  and  the  unions  are  strange ; 
but  probably  there  was  less  need  of  these  cases  to 
express  plurality.  So  many  things  are  more  common 
in  the  singular  than  the  plural,  and  many  have  no 
plural ;  the  dual,  too,  was  but  little  used  even  by 
those  languages  which  possessed  it. 

45.  This   shows   all    the    better  the   fact,   which 
appeared  to  some  extent  in  the  singular,  that  there 
was  no   definite    number   of  cases — no  num- 
ber just  sufficient  to    express    certain  logical  ideas. 
Such  an  idea  has  been  held  even  in  this  century ;  it 
was  natural  to  a  student  of  one  or  two  languages 
only,  especially  of  subtly  constructed  languages,  such 
as  Greek  and  (to  a  less  degree)  Latin,  to  suppose  that 
just  those  cases  which   he  found  there   formed  the 
natural  and  necessary  number  to  express  those  shades 
of  thought  which  they  did  express  so  admirably.     In- 
deed it  was  even  supposed  that  the  Greek  language 
gave  the  typical  number,  and  that  the  ablative  was  an 
irregular  and  not  wholly  commendable  addition  of  the 
Romans.     This  is  not  the  way  in  which  languages 
spring  up  and  grow.     These  forms  were  used  at  first 
without  much  precision ;  then  by  degrees  as  distinc- 
tions in  thought  accumulated,  the  forms  of  language 
were  defined  to  express  them,  but  rarely  so  exactly  as 
not  to  allow  two  or  three  ways  to  remain  for  saying 
the  same  thing. 

46.  You   may  easily  see  this  in   the   use   of  the 
cases.     We  can  say  l  to  slay  with  the  sword '  or  '  to 


V.]  HOW  WORDS  ARE  PREPARED.  ill 

be  slain  by  the  sword/  according  as  you  regard  the 
sword  as  that  by  which  a  man  is  accompanied,  or  the 
instrument  of  striking ;  and  the  one  suits  the  active  a 
little  better,  the  other  the  passive.  We  can  say  in  Latin 
*  potiri  harena/  or  *  potiri  harense/  according  as  you 
phrase  it  'to  enrich  yourself  with  the  sand  '  (instru- 
mental-ablative), or  '  to  be  lords  of  the  sand/  where 
the  substantive  idea  is  strong  in  the  verb,  and  there- 
fore it  likes  the  genitive  better.  You  can  express  the 
price  or  value  of  a  thing  in  many  different  ways — 
by  the  instrumental  (Sanskrit),  as  that  sum  by  means 
of  which  you  buy  it ;  by  the  locative  (Latin,  '  magni/ 
'tanti/  &c.),  as  the  point  in  an  imaginary  scale  at 
which  the  article  stands  ;  by  the  ablative  in  Latin,  but 
probably  only  as  the  representative  of  the  instrumental ; 
by  the  genitive  (Greek  and  Lithuanian)  denoting 
simply  the  relation  between  the  thing  and  the  money, 
which  in  English  we  might  show  by  a  compound  like 
a  *  five-pound-book.'  The  moment  of  time  at 
which  a  thing  takes  place .  is  expressed  in  Sanskrit  by 
an  instrumental  or  a  locative,  in  Latin  by  an  ablative, 
in  Greek  by  a  dative,  in  Lithuanian  by  a  locative. 
Possibly  the  locative  may  be  the  original  case  in 
Greek  and  Latin,  and  the  others  may  only  represent 
it.  Yet  it  would  be  rash  to  say  that  the  instrumental 
and  ablative  could  not  themselves  have  borne  from 
the  beginning  the  meaning  which,  at  all  events  to  thos.e 
who  used  them,  they  seemed  naturally  to  bear. 

47.  As  a  last  example,  take  the  absolute  con- 
struction, as  it  is  called,  when  a  clause  of  the  main 
sentence  is  not  joined  to  it  by  any  bond — conjunction, 
or  other — but  exists  beside  it  '  freed  from  '  any  fetter 
(apolytos,  in  Latin  absolutus).  We  generally  meet  this 
construction  first  in  our  Latin  Grammar,  where  the 
ablative  is  the  case  so  used  ;  it  is  probably  an  ablative 
of  the  manner,  or  of  the  circumstances  under  which 
something  else  happens,  and  so  might  be  called  an 
instrumental  ablative.  But,  be  this  as  it  may,  the 

8* 


H2  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

ablative  henceforward  seems  to  us  the  one  natural 
case  to  be  '  absolute  ; '  and  when  we  find  a  genitive 
absolute  in  Greek  we  conclude  that  this  is  one  of  the 
many  instances  where  the  genitive  has  slipt  into  the 
shoes  of  the  lost  ablative.  It  may  be  so,  but  not 
necessarily.  Look  at  other  languages.  In  Sanskrit 
we  find  the  locative  regularly  so  used,  sometimes 
the  genitive,  rarely  the  ablative.  The  dative  is  used 
in  Lithuanian,  as  sometimes  in  Greek  ;  and  it  was 
apparently  also  found  in  Old  English — '  they  have 
stolen  him,  us  slepinge,'  in  WicklirTe;'  but  we  should 
now  say,  '  we  sleeping,'  just  as  a  nominative  is  some- 
times used  in  Greek.  Now  what  are  we  to  say  to  all 
this  diversity?  Clearly  there  is  no  one  proper  case 
to  be  used  absolutely ;  different  cases  can  be  used  to 
express  the  circumstances  of  the  main  action,  according 
to  the  fancy  of  the  speaker.  The  only  use  which  must 
be  called  ungrammatical  is  that  of  the  nominative. 

48.  These  illustrations  may  show  you  how  freely 
the   cases  can   be  used,   even   in  the  same  lan- 
guage.    This  freedom  seems  somewhat  strange  to  us 
in  learning  a  language.     It  seems  that  it  would  be 
much  more  natural   that   all  people  should    express 
the  same  idea  in  the  same  form.     In  reality  variety  is 
natural.     But  I  hope  that  you  see  that  (as  with  every- 
thing in  language)  there  is  a  reason  for  the  variety  ;  and 
will  not  suppose  that  some  unpleasant  persons — pos- 
sibly grammarians — laid  down  arbitrary  laws  to  puzzle 
learners.     We  must  except  from  the  variations  arising 
from    the   natural   love   of  variety    those  which   are 
due  to  mere  confusion,  e.g.  in   Latin  the   expression 
of  place  sometimes  by  a  genitive  (as  G0r.inthi\  some- 
times an  ablative  (Atken>s),  the  truth  being  that  one 
is  a  locative    singular,  the    other  a   locative   plural ; 
but   they   were    confounded    with    the   genitive   and 
ablative,  because  the  forms  had  become  identical. 

49.  It    is   impossible   to   explain  why  these   case- 
suffixes    had    the    meanings   which   have   been   here 


v.]  HOW  WORDS  ARE  PREPARED.  113 

attributed  to  them.  We  can  give  guesses  at  the  nomi- 
native and  accusative,  and  perhaps  at  the  genitive, 
principally  because  here  we  have  the  analogy  of  other 
families  of  language  to  show  us  how  similar  forms 
have  been  produced.  Such  evidence  of  course  is  not 
cogent.  Because  a  certain  principle  is  found  in  one 
family,  it  does  not  follow  that  it  must  have  acted  in 
another ;  and  from  the  nature  of  the  case  we  have  no 
parallel  forms  in  our  own  family  with  which  to  com- 
pare them.  They  are  themselves  the  ultimate  and 
sole  results  of  our  analysis.  Therefore  although  it 
is  vexatious  to  be  stopped  just  when  we  seem  to  be 
on  the  point  of  learning  all  that  we  wish  to  know,  yet 
the  safe  plan  is  to  confess  our  ignorance,  and  ac- 
quiesce in  having  reached  the  limits  of  the  knowable. 
50.  It  may  not  be  uninteresting  to  explain  very 
briefly  what  these  familiar  terms  mean.  Case, 
nominative,  accusative,  &c.,  are  all  terms  familiar  to 
us  for  many  a  day  ;  but  they  are  not  intelligible  in 
themselves.  How  did  they  come  to  us,  and  what  did 
they  all  mean?  Casus  is  the  translation  made  at 
Rome  of  Greek  ptosis,  a  word  which  first  appears  in 
Aristotle.  It  meant  'a  falling,'  a  variation  from  the 
primary  form,  whether  of  noun  or  verb.  It  was  first 
restricted  to  nouns  by  the  Stoics,  who  gave  the  names 
.genikt  (genitive),  aitiatike  (accusative),  dotike  (dative). 
The  nominative  they  called  orthe,  or  eutheia;  by  the 
first  name  they  meant  *  active/  the  case  which  denotes 
the  agent,  the  opposite  term  being  hyptia,  that  is, 
'  thrown/  a  term  borrowed  from  wrestling.  The  cor- 
responding Latin  term  ('  passive ')  is  still  retained  in 
grammar  for  the  voice  which  expresses  how  a  person 
or  thing  is  acted  upon.  Eutheia  means  '  straight/  as 
opposed  to  cases  which  were  plagiai,  i.e.  l  slanting ' 
from  the  nominative,  or  upright,  case.  But  when  the 
Stoics  used  the .  term  ptosis  of  the  nominative,  the 
Peripatetics  objected,  and  told  the  Stoics  that  by  their 
own  showing  the  nominative  was  no  'case/  The 


114  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

Stoics  therefore  gave  a  false  derivation  to  the  term, 
and  said  that  it  meant  a  '  falling  away '  from  the 
mental  conception  into  the  intelligible  representation. 
This  suited  their  conception  of  names  as  realities, 
which  forbade  them  to  separate  the  nominative  from 
the  other  cases,  and  explains  why  they  refused  *  ptosis ' 
to  verbs  which  expressed  accidental  relations  only. 

51.  The  Latin  nominative  is  a  translation  of 
onomastike,  the  '  naming '  case.  It  is  a  bad  title, 
because  the  nominative  does  not  merely  name,  but 
expresses  that  a  thing  is  in  a  particular  relation. 
Genike  meant  the  '  class-case ; '  in  such  a  statement  as 
'  of  good  things  some  are  mine,'  the  genitive  denotes 
the  genus,  of  which  mine  are  a  species.  Clearly  this 
is  one  use  only  of  the  genitive,  and  not  the  most 
common  ;  but  it  is  the  one  which  struck  the  man  who 
first  invented  the  name.  The  name  genitivus  is 
the  fault  of  the  Latin  translator.  Just  as  genike  de- 
notes one  use  only  of  the  case,  dotike  denotes  but  one 
use  of  the  dative — that  of  giving — though  a  very 
obvious  one.  Strictly,  however,  the  word  describes  a 
case  which  denotes  that  person  to  whom  some  one 
else  is  a  giver.  In  the  same  way  aitiatike  may  express 
that  person  or  thing  to  which  some  one  else  is  an 
aitid,  or  'cause1 — that  is  the  case  of  the  object  as 
opposed  to  the  subject.  But  this  is  uncertain,  and 
the  Latin  accusativus  gives  us  no  help.  Ablative 
was  a  Latin  name  from  the  beginning ;  the  Greeks 
did  not  want  it ;  the  name  expresses  the  use  well 
enough.  The  other  terms  explain  themselves. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

THE    PARTS    OF    SPEECH. 

i.  WE   have  thus  seen  how  verbs   got  and  used 
their  '  persons '  and  *  tenses/  and  how  nouns  got  and 


VI.]  THE  PARTS  OF  SPEECH.  115 

used  their  '  cases.'  But  is  the  whole  stock  of  grammar 
comprised  in  the  noun  and  the  verb  ?  Are  there  not 
other  "  Parts  of  Speech  "  as  important  as  these? 
Not  so  important  certainly.  The  '  noun  '  (onoma), 
or  *  name,'  and  the  *  verb  '  (rhema\  or  '  predicate ' 
— for  this  is  what  the  word  first  meant,  though  it  was 
soon  restricted  to  the  verb  as  being  either  the  whole 
or  the  most  important  part  of  the  predicate — these 
suffice  to  express  all  a  man  has  to  say,  though  some 
additions  may  enable  him  to  say  it  more  gracefully. 
We  have  seen  that  the  simple  verb  and  the 
nominative  and  accusative  cases  furnish  him 
with  the  means  of  distinguishing  subject,  ( 
object,  and  predicate,  the  primary  needs  of/ 
thought.  What  is  next  required  is  some  means  of 
expressing  the  circumstances  of  action ;  the 
time  in  which,  or  the  space  through  which,  or  the 
instrument  with  which  it  is  done  ;  the  cause  of  it,  the 
purpose  of  it,  and  the  result  of  it.  These  and 
the  like  can  be  set  forth  by  means  of  the 
'  cases  '  already  described. 

2.  We  can  test  very  fairly  the  measure  in  which  a 
language  has  preserved  its  ancient  character  by  the 
use  of  the  cases ;  and  so  judged,  no  European  lan- 
guages are  so  primitive  in  their  syntax  as  the  Latin 
and  the  Lithuanian.  In  Latin  the  genitive  and  dative 
have  preserved  without  development,  and  with  little 
accretion,  the  original  uses  of  those  cases  as  I  have 
described  them;  the  ablative,  indeed,  has  been  aug- 
mented by  the  instrumental  and  partly  by  the  locative, 
but  the  lines  can  be  drawn  pretty  clearly.  In  Sanskrit 
we  must  distinguish  two  periods,  that  of  the  Vedas, 
and  the  classical  period — that  of  the  Epics  and 
Dramas.  In  the  first  of  these  we  find  the  cases  in  clear 
and  regular  use.  In  the  classical  time  we  find  com- 
pounds (see  Ch.  IV.,  19),  which  render  cases  unneces- 
sary, and  even  verbs  to  a  great  extent ;  yet  the  cases 
are  used,  though  not  nearly  so  much  as  in  the  synthetic 


Ii6  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

European  languages.  But  they  are  used,  as  might  be 
expected,  with  much  confusion ;  the  dative  is  almost 
starved  out,  the  genitive  is  little  more  frequent,  and 
then  occurs  mostly  with  verbs.  The  ablative  keeps 
its  proper  place,  but  the  locative  has  been  enormously 
expanded,  so  as  to  express  not  only  the  place  *  in 
which,'  but  also  the  person  ('  I  will  dwell  in  thee') : 
it  is  frequently  used  for  the  indirect  object  ('  speak  in 
me,'  not  *  to  me '),  for  the  purpose,  as  *  invite  in  the 
sacrifice,'  not  '  to,'  &c  ),  and  sometimes  even  for  the 
result  and  the  manner  of  an  action ;  the  *  absolute ' 
use  has  been  already  mentioned.  The  instrumental 
— perhaps  the  commonest  of  all — denoting,  as  I  have 
said,  the  agent  quite  as  often  as  the  instrument,  is 
also  sometimes  used  to  denote  the  time,  and  more 
rarely  the  manner  of  an  action.  It  is  evident  how 
much  a  language  like  this  has  departed  from  its 
primitive  form  ;  and  this  lateness  of  Sanskrit  syntax 
deserves  notice,  since  we  give  so  much  weight  to  the 
antiquity  of  its  accidence. 

3.  But  then  how  did  these  other  parts  of 
speech  arise  if  verbs  and  nouns  were  sufficient  ? 
What  are  adverbs  ?  and  how  did  they  arise  ?  The 
name  does  not  quite  tell  its  tale ;  adverbs  are  not 
specially  connected  with  verbs ;  but  the  Greek  name 
'  epirrhema '  is  clear  enough ;  it  means  that  which  is 
'  joined  to  the  predicate/  to  define  it  more  exactly. 
And  their  origin  is  in  most  cases  plain  :  they  are 
really  cases  of  nouns.  This  you  can  see  at  once 
in  Greek,  in  the  great  class  of  so-called  adverbs  end- 
ing in  -os  (dikaiosj  sophronos\  which  are  all  ablatives ; 
and  there  are  many  others,  locatives  (as  chamai  =  on 
the  ground),  and  instrumentals  (nosphi  =  separately, 
&c.).  Now  these  cases  had  fallen  out  of  ordinary  use 
in  Greece,  and  therefore  the  isolated  examples 
left  frequently  seemed  to  belong  to  no  noun  ; 
they  could  only  be  used  in  one  connection,  whereas 
a  noun  can  be  used  in  many ;  and  they  could  not  be 


vi. ]  THE  PAR TS  OF  SPEECH.  1 1  ^ 

declined.  They  were  therefore  thought  to  be  a  sepa- 
rate division  of  speech,  and  had  a  name  given 
accordingly. 

4.  We  can  show  this  in  English  : — once,  twice,  are 
old  genitives  of  one,  tzvo  ;  once  is  still  spelt  in  northern 
English  anes.     Needs  is  another  genitive  =  of  neces- 
sity, as  in  '  it  must  needs  be ; '  l  the  more  '  is  for  '  thy 
more'  =  'more  by  that,'  the  old  instrumental  of  the; 
whilome  was  originally  written  hwil-um,  and  was  the 
dative  plural  of  while  (fiwil)  a  time ;  you  may  still 
hear  in  some  places  a  genitive  whiles,   meaning  at 
times  ;  seldom  is  another  dative.     Sometimes,  indeed, 
an  adverb  is  not  merely  a  case ;  it  consists  of  several 
words,  perhaps  a  whole  sentence,  run  together  and 
written  together,  such  as  altogether,  may  be,  neverthe- 
less;  but  even  of  these  a  great  majority  contain  a  real 
case,  such  as  now-a-days  (genitive),  whereupon  (origin- 
ally hwar-upon,  hwdr  being  a   locative)  ;    there  are 
similar  combinations  in  other  languages,  as  in  Greek 
(delonoti  =  clearly,  estin  hote  —  sometimes).      Again, 
there  are  many  little  adverbs  in  all  languages  which 
cannot  be  proved  to  be  cases — such  as  up,  on,  off,  in 
English.     But  there  is  good  reason  from  the  analogy 
of  similar  forms  in  many  languages  for  supposing  that 
these  also  were  originally  cases,  though  worn  down 
past  all   recognition.     Generally,  then,    we  may  say 
that  an  adverb  is  historically  a  petrified  case, 
though  grammatically  it  is  convenient  to  treat  it  is  a 
separate  part  of  speech. 

5.  Adverbs  were  one  way  of  expressing  more  clearly 
and  fully  the  circumstances  of  an  action,  just  as  the 
cases  did,  which  they  were  once  recognised  to  be.    But 
there  was  a  source  of  confusion  in  the  cases  themselves. 
These,  as  we  have  seen,  had  very  general  meanings 
at  the  beginning.     Thus  '  eo  urbem '  might  convey 
the  notion  of  going,  and  that  a  city  was  the  object 
of  that  going':  but  then  it  was  possible  to  go  to  a  city 
in  many  different  ways.     If  the  name  of  the  city  was 


n8  .        PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

given,  it  seems  that  the  purpose  of  the  going  was  clear 
enough  from  the  context :  thus  you  said  *  eo  Romam,1 
and  so  with  a  few  familiar  words  as  home  ('  eo  domum '), 
&c.  But  at  other  times,  when  greater  clearness  was 
desired,  you  expressed  the  mere  going  to  a  place  by 
1  eo  ad  urbem  ; '  if  you  were  going  as  an  enemy,  you 
might  say  *  eo  adversus  urbem;'  if  the  town  was  on 
a  hill,  you  would  say  '  eo  sub  urbem  ; '  and  so  on. 
Again,  when  cases  were  lost,  and  one  case  did  the 
work  of  many,  some  additional  help  was  still  more 
wanted.  Thus  the  Latin  ablative  'urbe1  might  be 
'  from  a  city '  or  '  in  a  city '  (locative),  or  '  because  of 
a  city '  (instrumental) :  therefore  you  said  '  ab  urbe ' 
or  *  ex  urbe,'  according  as  you  merely  came  from  the 
city  or  out  of  it ;  '  in  urbe '  if  you  lived  in  the  city ; 
for  the  instrumental  sense  'urbe'  alone  would  gram- 
matically suffice,  but  you  would  probably  change  the 
expression  and  say  *  propter  urbem '  or  *  ob  urbem/ 
with  slightly  different  shades  of  meaning. 

6.  These  defining  words  were  called  preposi- 
tions :  very  often  they  were  undoubtedly  adverbs, 
i.e.  cases  of  nouns  originally  :  propter  meant  '  near  at 
hand/  then  *  near '  some  place,  with  other  derived 
meanings  ;  and  in  English  you  can  say  *  I  ran  him 
through,'  or  *  I  ran  him  through  the  body,'  where 
*  through  '  is  first  an  adverb,  then  a  preposition.  Pro- 
bably it  is  a  modified  form  of  an  old  noun,  which 
appears  in  Gothic  as  '  thairko '  ( =  hole).  Again,  in 
Latin  coram  is  'face  to  face,'  an  adverb;  and,  first  of 
all,  was  probably  co  +  os-am;  the  -am  being  a  locative 
form,  almost,  but  not  quite,  peculiar  to  Latin,  seen  in 
tarn,  nam,  perperam,  &c. ;  then  it  is  used  together  with 
an  ablative  =  '  before  a  person.'  But  it  is  from  the 
Greek  that  this  appears  most  clearly ;  in  this  language 
even  the  commonest  prepositions  (ept\  pros,  &c.)  were 
used  without  any  noun,  and  most  of  all  in  the  oldest 
stage  of  the  language.  So  we  believe,  even  though 
we  cannot  fully  prove  it  any  more  than  for  adverbs, 


VI.]  THE  PARTS  OF  SPEECH.  119 

that  prepositions  also  were  originally  cases 
of  nouns  added  to  define  the  meaning  more  clearly, 
and  by  degrees  attaching  themselves  more  particularly 
to  nouns.  You  would  naturally  think  that  the  name 
means  that  which  is  '  put  before '  a  noun.  But  this  is 
not  so.  The  word  is  a  translation  of  the  Greek  pro- 
thesis.  Now  in  Greek  a  preposition  is  put  after  its 
case  nearly  as  often  as  before  it ; '  so  too  in  Sanskrit, 
where,  however,  prepositions  in  the  strict  sense  are 
rare :  the  term  must  have  meant  that  which  in  com- 
position of  words  was  put  before  a  noun  or  a  verb. 
The  process  of  combination  of  these  elements  with 
verbs  is  very  well  seen  in  Greek ;  in  the  oldest  stage 
of  the  language  they  were  still  separate,  i.e.  still 
adverbs. 

7.  Next,  what  are  Conjunctions  ?  This  carries 
us  a  great  step  further  in  the  development  of  syntax. 
Cases,  either  still  visibly  cases  or  petrified  into 
adverbs  or  prepositions,  suffice  to  denote  the  circum- 
stances of  an  action,  so  long  as  no  other  action  comes 
into  consideration.  But  when  this  no  longer  holds, 
when  one  action  is  the  condition  or  result  of 
another,  something  more  is  needed.  The 
oldest  and  simplest  method  is  to  put  the  two  actions 
side  by  side — expressed  in  co-ordinate  clauses ;  and 
to  leave  it  to  the  reader  to  determine  their  true  rela- 
tion. Thus  we  have  in  the  Bible  version  of  the  Psalms : 
"  Thou  takest  away  their  breath,  they  die  :  "  here  the 
first  sentence  expresses  the  antecedent  cause  of  the 
second  ;  but  thty  are  co-ordinated  in  the  grammatical 
expression.  Such  simple  constructions  are  common 
in  the  Veda.  The  next  step  is  to  find  some  loose 
link ;  if  we  turn  again  to  the  Psalms,  we  may  find 
among  many  others  :  "  Thou  makest  darkness,  and  it 
is  night : "  here  the  night  is  certainly  meant  to  be  the 
result  of  God's  making  darkness :  but  here  again  we 
have  co-ordinate  sentences,  not  a  principal  clause  and 
a  subordinate  clause.  Many  traces  of  this  stage  linger 
11 


120  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

in  the  undeveloped  syntax  of  Homer,  e.g.  in  Iliad  x. 
224,  'sun  te  du' erchomeno  kai  te  pro  hotou  enoesen;' 
where  the  first  part  is  really  equivalent  to  a  dependent 
clause  ;  *  where  two  go  together,  one  sees  before  the 
other:  "  but  the  two  are  put  independently  and  joined 
by  an  'and/  The  well  known  ' de  in  apodosi'  is  a 
survival  in  classical  Greek  of  the  same  mode  of 
expression. 

8.  Then  lastly  comes  the  stage  when  special  words 
are  used  for  the  purpose  of  distinguishing  the  clauses 
in  more  logical  fashion  ;  which  you  may  see,  though, 
in  the  earlier  (Prayer-book)  version  of  the  Psalms, 
'  when  Thou  takest  away  their  breath,  they  die  : ' 
and  'Thou  makest  darkness  that  it  may  be  night.' 
These  little  words — whether  used  to  bind  together  (as 
and,  also)  or  to  distinguish  (as  but^  however)  co-ordinate 
sentences,  or  to  mark  out  subordinate  clauses  (as  when, 
if,  so  that,  lest) — are  alike  called  conjunctions  ('sundes- 
moi ').  Now  what  are  these  words?  Just  like 
prepositions  and  adverbs,  a  mass  of  conjunctions 
are  obviously  cases — generally  of  pronouns  ; 
and  we  may  suppose  that  the  others  were  probably 
so  too.  We  must  again  except  the  compressed 
sentences  (see  §  4)  as  howbeit,  nevertheless,  and  a  few 
verbs,  generally  imperatives,  which  by  their  nature, 
imply  a  condition,  e.g.  suppose,  grant,  or  granted  that ; 
so  in  Latin  fac,  licet,  videlicet,  i.e.  'videre  licet/  &c. 
When  is  the  accusative  masculine  of  who;  if  may  be 
corrupted  from  a  locative  form  of  the  same  base,  but 
more  probably  it  is  the  same  as  the  Icelandic  ef,  which 
was  originally  a  noun  and  meant  doubt ;  in  the  Latin 
too  cum  is  the  accusative  of  the  relative  pronoun,  si 
the  locative  of  the  demonstrative,  in  Greek  ei  and  hos 
are  respectively  the  locative  and  the  ablative  of  the 
relative.  In  Latin  even  the  simplest  of  all  conjunc- 
tions que  (and)  is  a  form  of  the  relative.  Probably, 
also,  kai  in  Greek.  This  shows  the  looseness  and 
inartificial!  ty  of  the  links  which  were  used  to  join 


VI.]  THE  PARTS  OF  SPEECH.  121 

sentences  ;  just  as  you  may  hear  in  vulgar  English, 
*  which  he  didn't  want  to  go,'  and  the  like. 

9.  So   you   see   that    etymological ly    there    is  no 
difference   between   adverbs,  prepositions,   and  con- 
junctions ;  they  are  all  (with  a  few  exceptions)  cases  of 
nouns  (including  pronouns) ;  they   can  be   to  some 
extent  interchanged  ;  e.g.  adverbs  pass  into  prepositions 
as  we  have  seen  ;  cum  is  both  a  preposition  and  a 
conjunction  in  Latin;  /ids  in  Greek  is  an  adverb  ('  as '), 
a  conjunction  ('how'  or •' when'),  and  is  even  used 
with  proper  names  in  the   sense    of  a   preposition, 
'to;'  perhaps  there  has  been  an  ellipse  of  the  true 
preposition  ;  but  anyhow  hos  has  logically  the  force 
of  one  .in  the  sentence  as  actually  used.     No  doubt 
in   use  adverbs,  prepositions,  and   conjunctions   are 
generally    distinct ;    but    there    is    no    fundamental 
distinction  between  them  :  they  have  sprung  up  out 
of  the  same  material,  and  have  been  developed  as 
use  required. 

10.  Last  in  our  grammars  comes  the  interjection. 
But  this,  so  far  from  being  a  '  part  of  speech,'  is  in 
itself  a  whole  speech,  though  undeveloped  and  vague. 
This  I  will  point  out  more  fully  hereafter. 

11.  In  this  way  we  find   that    all  the  parts  of 
speech  are  but  the  modification  of  two,  the 
noun    and   the    verb.      To    us    the   substantive, 
adjective,   pronoun,   verb,   adverb,  preposition,    con- 
junction, interjection,  seem  so  inseparably  bound  up 
with  grammar  that  we  cannot  at  first  conceive  a  time 
when  they  were  not  recognised.     Now  we  see  that 
they  are  not  necessary  at  all.     They  don't  occur 
in  all  languages.     They  are  found  in  our  group  of 
languages,  and  they  are  convenient  logically ;  but  even 
with  us  they  have  varied.     All  grammarians  have  not 
recognised  them  all ;  in  fact  the  earliest  gram- 
marians distinguished  just  so  many  parts  as 
struck  them  ;   and  others  were  added  after- 
wards.    Aristotle,  as  we  saw,  knew  of  the  *  onoma ' 


122  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

and  the  '  rhema ; '  he  also  spoke  of  '  sundesmoi ' 
(meaning  probably  not  merely  '  conjunctions,'  but 
adverbs  and  prepositions  too)  and  of  'arthra,'  i.e. 
joints  or  sockets,  meaning  apparently  the  pronouns, 
by  which  the  real  limbs  of  language,  the  noun  and 
verb,  were  jointed  together;  but  he  does  not  seem  to 
have  thought  them  necessary  ;  rather  they  were  the 
refinements  of  the  Greek  language.  It  is  noteworthy 
that  Aristotle  made  the  marking  of  time  a  part  of  his 
definition  of  a  verb ;  to  this  he  was  naturally  led  by 
the  numerous  tenses  of  the  Greek.  Yet  this  notation  of 
time  is  only  an  accident  of  the  verb  :  the  verb  would  be 
just  as  much  a  verb  if  it  had  no  clear  distinction  of 
time,  as  in  the  Semitic  languages.  The  same  point  is 
brought  out  in  the  German  term  for  the  verb — Zeitwort. 
12.  The  Stoics  made  further  distinctions  more 
curious  than  permanent.  They  divided  the  noun 
into  '  common'  names  and  *  proper'  names:  the 
former  they  called  '  prosegoriai,'  to  the  latter  they 
appropriated  the  original  word  '  onoma.'  This  again 
seems  to  have  sprung  from  their  philosophy :  to 
common  names  they  attributed  a  certain  reality,  a 
natural  and  necessary  correspondence  with  the  thing 
signified.  They  had  not  observed,  what  we  often 
forget,  that  a  name  can  but  express  one  property  of  a 
thing ;  and  that  all  the  other  properties  which  the 
name  by  association  of  ideas  recalls  to  our  mind  the 
instant  that  we  hear  it,  are  not  in  the  name  at  all.  But 
even  the  Stoics  could  not  maintain  that  every  *  Agath- 
archus '  would  necessarily  be  a  '  good  ruler,'  any  more 
than  we  should  expect  every  *  Smith'  to  be  good  at 
the  forge.  But  their  distinction  (in  the  later  form 
'  onoma  idion  ')  has  survived  in  our  l  proper  name.' 
They  are  also  said  to  have  invented  a  term  '  pan- 
dektes ' — the  '  all-receiver ' — for  the  adverb  ;  however, 
their  successors  abolished  this  refuge  of  grammatical 
despair.  But  they  seem  to  have  done  some  real  good 
in  distinguishing  'arthra'  into  'definite'  (by  which 


vi.]  THE  PARTS  OF  SPEECH.  123 

they  meant  personal  pronouns),  and  '  indefinite/  the 
other  pronouns. 

13.  It   was   at   Alexandria,  the  earliest  home   of 
criticism  and  grammatical  activity,  that  we  first  get 
—from  Zenodotus — the  term  'antonumia/  our  pro- 
noun, from   which   he   distinguished  the   'arthron* 
as  the  '  article '  pure  and  simple.     *  Pronoun,'  like  so 
many  other  terms,  is  but  an  imperfect  definition  of  the 
thing ;  it  is  certainly  put  *  for  a  noun '  in  such  a  phrase 
as  *  I  told  John  that  he  was  wrong.'    But  in  the  phrase 
6  He  who  does  wrong  is  unhappy/  he  and  who  include 
all  the  Johns  in  the  world,  and  the  Toms  and  Dicks 
into  the  bargain.    A  pronoun  is  a  general  noun,  which 
may  sometimes  have  a  restricted  use,  and  it  may  be 
either   a   substantive    (he)    or   adjective    (any).      In 
its  formation  it  has  a  base  and  cases,  just  like  any 
noun.     Historically,  therefore,  a  pronoun  is  a  noun 
and  nothing  else,  though  logically  it  may  be  distin- 
guished as  a  separate  part  of  speech.     At  Alexandria 
also  Aristarchus  distinguished  prepositions  as  a  class 
distinct  from  '  sundesmoi/  and  probably  also  partici- 
ples.   These  were  great  bugbears  to  our  grammatical 
forefathers.     What  were   these   creatures   with   cases 
like  nouns,  yet  followed  in  a  sentence  by  other  nouns, 
just  like  verbs,  which  also  like  verbs  denoted  difference 
of  time — doing,  having  done,  being  about  to  do  ?    No 
answer  could  be  agreed  upon,  and  a  new  *  part  of 
speech'  arose — the  *  metoche/  that  which  *  partakes1 
of  the  nature  of  the  noun  and  also  of  the  nature  of 
the  verb;  and  of  this  term  i  participium '    is   a  not 
very  obvious  rendering. 

14.  From   Alexandria,   in   due   course,    Dionysius 
Thrax  took  his  eight  parts  of  speech  to   Rome  ;  his 
'  onoma/  <  rhema/  '  metoche/  '  arthron/   '  antonumia/ 
'  prothesis/  '  epirrhema/  and  '  sundesmos/     And  from 
that   day  to    this  has  survived    the    mystic  number 
eight.      No  grammarian   could  be   forgiven   who  di- 
minished the    number,    though   he    might   alter   the 


124  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

claimants  to  a  place  in  the  august  assembly.  And  you 
will  see  that  two  have  been  changed.  The  '  metoche ' 
was  adjudged  to  belong  to  the  verb.  Then  the  term 
'  arthron '  was  not  wanted  out  of  Greece  ;  the  Romans 
had  no  '  article.'  So  two  places  were  empty.  One 
was  filled  by  the  subdivision  of  the  noun  into  the 
substantive  and  the  adjective,  the  name  of  the 
thing  and  the  name  of  the  attribute  of  a  thing ;  again 
a  distinction  logically  valuable,  but  unimportant  to  the 
student  of  language  in  and  for  itself,  because  the 
adjective  is  identical  in  formation  with  the  substantive. 
And  a  new  part  was  added  at  the  end — the  '  interjec- 
tion/ to  which  the  wiser  Greeks  had  not  allowed  a 
place.  Such  is  the  history  of  our  eight  '  Parts 
of  Speech.* 

15.  W^y  is  the  part  of  grammar  which  describes 
them  called  '  Accidence  '  ?  Again  you  must  go  back 
to  Alexandria.  Dionysius,  or  some  one  before  him, 
noted  that  there  were  five  *  things  that  went  by  the 
side '  of  nouns,  these  were  gender,  kind  (according  as 
the  nouns  were  primary  or  derivative),  class  (accor- 
ding as  they  were  simple  or  compound),  number,  and 
case.  These  l  side  marks '  were  translated  at  Rome 
by  the  neuter  plural  participle  '  accidentia,'  all  that 
pertains  to  nouns ;  and  the  term,  when  applied  to  the 
verb  also,  included  all  that  we  call  (as  if  *  accidentia  ' 
had  been  a  feminine  singular) '  accidence.' 


CHAPTER  VII. 

THE   BEGINNINGS    OF   SYNTAX. 

i.  EVERY  grammar  (under  the  head  of  syntax)  lays 
down  the  rules,  which  are  observed  in  the  language 
it  treats  of,  for  the  ordering  of  words  in  a  sentence. 
Many  of  these  are  common  to  all  languages,  with  very 


vii.]  THE  BEGINNINGS  OF  SYNTAX.  125 

trifling  exceptions,  as  the  '  concords/  the  simplest  uses 
of  the  cases,  the  primary  usage  of  the  subjunctive,  and 
the  like.  It  is  in  the  special  development  of  these  by 
different  languages  that  the  genius  of  each  language 
is  best  shown.  But  with  these  we  have  not  now  to  do. 
I  only  wish  to  say  something  about  the  nature  of  these 
*  rules  '  of  grammar.  We  are  apt  to  regard  them  as 
final  for  each  language,  and  to  think  that  any  excep- 
tion must  be  wrong.  Thus,  for  example,  when  we  read 
Greek  we  find  certain  rules  in  our  grammar,  and  if 
Homer  or  Sophocles  wrote  differently  in  some  respects, 
we  think,  not  perhaps  that  they  wrote  bad  Greek,  but 
we  take  it  for  granted  that  their  variations  are  '  excep- 
tions '  to  our  rules.  But  language  cannot  be  so  bound. 
Rules  lay  down  certain  practices  observed  in 
speaking  by  men  of  a  certain  day.  But  their 
grandfathers  talked  a  little  differently,  and  so  do  their 
grandsons  ;  and  little  by  little  the  differences  becomes 
considerable.  What  we  really  have  in  language  are 
habits  of  expression  which  are  constantly  growing  and 
changing ;  and  no  set  of  rules  can  limit,  no  one  set  can 
express  this  increasing  growth.  What  was  a  familiar 
use  for  Hesiod  might  not  be  so  for  Demosthenes  ;  but 
it  is  absurd  to  explain  Hesiod's  variation  as  an  excep- 
tion to  a  rule  which  he  never  knew.  The  beginnings 
of  syntax  are  like  a  wild  wood  ;  every  thing  grows 
exuberantly  without  a  shaping  hand  ;  then  by  degrees 
portions  are  cleared  and  a  certain  degree  of  order  is 
introduced,  yet  not  so  completely  but  that  some  wild 
growths  still  indicate  the  primaeval  vigour  and  fertility; 
lastly  comes  the  literary  period,  like  the  Italian  garden, 
where  trim  order  is  supreme. 

2.  The  rules  of  Greek  grammar  were  deduced  by 
Alexandrian  grammarians  from  the  writings  of  the 
most  flourishing  period  of  Greek  literature.  But 
Sophocles  and  Thucydides  did  not  write  by  those 
rules,  for  the  good  reason  that  no  rules  then  existed ; 
they  made  the  matter  out  of  which  the  rules  were 


126  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

made.  They  wrote,  we  may  say,  tentatively;  they 
felt  the  unbounded  wealth  of  their  language,  and  they 
threw  out  bold  forms  of  expression,  some  of  which 
survived  in  common  use,  and  some  did  not.  Unless 
we  see  this,  we  cannot  really  understand  their  style. 
Thucydides  was  not  consciously  writing  bad  grammar 
when  he  wrote  his  amazing  anacolutha,  of  which  a 
good  specimen  was  once  constructed  at  Cambridge,  as 
follows  :  "  An  awkward  thing  to  drive  is  pigs  many  by 
one  man  very."  He  was  letting  his  growing  thought 
frame  his  language,  confident  that  the  reader  would 
be  guided  through  the  puzzle  by  his  comprehension  of 
the  sense.  No  doubt  literature  will  limit  variation ; 
when  ninety-nine  persons  use  in  writing  the  same 
constructions,  the  hundredth  will  not  vary  much  unless 
he  wishes  to  be  thought  either  uneducated  or  affected. 
General  principles  will  become  stereotyped.  But 
enough  will  always  be  left  to  individual  freedom  of 
style  ;  still  more  to  the  essential  freedom  of  language 
as  a  whole,  which  can  never  be  utterly  bound  by  rule. 
All  language  is  free  within  the  limits  of  intelligibility. 
3.  Every  rule  is  really  the  expression  of 
that  which  is  no  more  than  a  prevailing 
tendency — a  main  current  which  may  have  many 
a  back-water.  What  can  be  more  fluctuating  than  the 
'rule'  that  transitive  verbs  require  an  accusative? 
You  say  '  amo  te ; '  where  '  te '  is  the  accusative  after 
a  transitive  verb.  Then  when  '  amo '  is  used  alone, 
as  it  easily  may  be,  what  is  it?  Is  it  no  longer 
transitive  ?  And  if  the  same  verb  may  be  transitive 
and  intransitive,  what  is  the  good  of  the  rule  ?  When 
I  say  'capio  baculum/  I  take  a  stick,  I  have  no  doubt 
followed  my  rule,  in  using  the  accusative  after  a 
transitive  verb.  But  I  say  '  utor  baculo,'  '  I  use  a 
stick : '  is  '  I  use  *  any  less  transitive  than  '  I  take  '  ? 
Does  not  the  '  sense  pass  on  'to  the  noun  ?  Is  a  noun 
any  less  required  to  complete  the  idea  with  the  one 
than  with  the  other  ? 


VIL]  THE  BEGINNINGS  OF  SYNTAX.  127 

4.  The   truth   is    this.     We    try  for    the   sake   of 
clearness   to   draw  a   definite    line   between    transi- 
tive   and   intransitive   verbs,   though    no    such    line 
exists.     We  then  give  certain  exceptions ;  some  verbs 
which  lie  on  the  frontier  have  little  rules  for  them- 
selves.    No  rationale  is  given  of  the  different  uses 
of  the  same  verb.     The  result  is  that  we  have  a  set  of 
rules  quite  good  enough  for  a  learner,  though  some- 
times perplexing  even  to  him.     But  often  no  sort  of 
explanation  is  given  of  these  rules — no  full  light  is 
thrown  on  the  deeply  interesting   life   of  language. 
We  have  indeed  no  right  to  complain  of  a  grammar 
for  being  no  more  than  it  professes  to  be — a  key  to  a 
particular  language.     Rather  it  is  right  to  point  out 
that   a   special  grammar  can   from   its   very 
nature  do  no  more,  except  incidentally. 

5.  But  comparative  philology  can  explain 
the   anomalies  which   present   themselves  to   the 
student  of  the  syntax  of  a  single  language,  or  even  of 
one  family  of  languages.     It  can  throw  light  upon  this 
anomaly  of  verbs  sometimes  transitive  and  sometimes 
intransitive,  by  pointing  out  the  original  relation  of  the 
verb  and  the  noun.     The  verb  and  the  noun  were 
originally   separated   by  no   such   line   as   is   drawn 
between  them  in  our  syntax.    Nay,  clear  traces  remain 
in  our  own  family  of  speech  of  a  time  when  they  were 
much  nearer  together.     We  find  in  old  Latin  writers 
examples  of  an  accusative  following  a  noun,  just  as  it 
commonly  follows  a  verb.     In  Plautus  there  is  the 
question  '  Quid  tibi  hanc  tactio  est  ?  *  as  we  might  say 
in  English  '  What  do  you  mean  by  touching  her  ? ' 
where  taclio  takes  the  accusative  just  as  tango  would 
do.     So  in  Sanskrit  we    find   data  vasu  =  '  a  giver 
of  wealth ' ;  here  the  form  is  like  what  '  dator  opes  ' 
instead  of  '  dator  opum  '  would  be  in  Latin.     Nay,  in 
Sanskrit   there   occurs  even    such  an  anomaly  as   a 
verb    undergoing    comparison  :     e.g..     bhavati-taram 
(—  'est-terum')  *  he  is  more  so/     We  have  seen  the 

»* 


128  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

infinitive,  although  itself  a  dative,  regularly  followed  by 
other  nouns ;  so  also  cases  follow  the  supines  and  the 
gerunds  (which  are  secondary  nouns)  in  Latin,  and  the 
so-called  '  indeclinable  participles '  in  Sanskrit,  which 
are  instrumentals  of  nouns  in  ///,  e.g.  dattwa  rasit, 
*  having  given  wealth '  (literally  '  by  giving  wealth/) 

6.  Much  more  is  this  want  of  distinctness  in  use 
found  in  languages  alien  to  ours.    In  Japanese,  a  some- 
what more  developed  language  than  Chinese,  the  verb 
and   noun   are   not  yet   divided :   there  is  no   clear 
line  between  them  in  Turkish.     But  in  our  family  of 
languages  they  have  emerged  as  slightly  different  forms 
of  one  radical  idea  distinguished  by  suffixes,  and  some- 
times by  vowel-change:  e.g.  from  root  due,  comes  duc-s 
(ihtx\  a  leader,  and  duc-o,  I  lead ;  from  root  voc  comes 
voc-s  (vox),  a  voice,  and  voco,  I  call.    The  verb  extends 
the  radical   idea  in  the  direction  of  action,  motion, 
change.    The  noun  tends  towards  the  opposite  pole  of 
rest  and  permanence.   The  more  then  of  permanence  is 
contained  in  the  radical  idea  ('being,'  '  believing/  &c.), 
the  more  of  the  substantive  is  there  in  the  verb,  and 
the  less  does  the  verb  require  any  noun,  as  an  object, 
to  fill  out  its  sense — in  grammatical  language  so  much 
the  more  is  it  'intransitive.'     The  more  of  action  and 
the  less  of  permanence  there  is  in  a  verb,  so  much 
the  more  is  it  'transitive.'     But  the  amount  of  per- 
manence in  almost  any  verb  may  vary  according  to 
the  whole  idea  to   be  expressed  :   thus  in  '  amo  te,' 
action  is  denoted,  and  you  may  for  convenience  call 
the  verb  transitive ;  'amo,'  is  'I  am  in  love,'  and  here 
a  permanent  state  is  expressed,  and  you  may  call  it 
intransitive.      But    really    this    verb    is    neither 
transitive  nor  intransitive  in  itself:  all  depends 
on  the  context. 

7.  Of  course  there  are  verbs  which  in  their  essen- 
tial meaning  are  so  very  *  active,'  others  so  '  perma- 
nent,' that   the   context  can    make    little  difference, 
and  there  is  no  harm  in  calling  them  transitive  or 


vnj  THE  BEGINNINGS  OF  SYNTAX.  129 

intransitive.  Yet  the  flexibility  of  language  is  almost 
infinite.  When  we  find  an  accusative  with  the  verb 
'  to  be/ — as  we  do  in  Greek  (aken  esan  =  they 
were  silence)  and  frequently  in  Sanskrit — we  seem  to 
have  got  a  very  remarkable  example  of  the  instability 
of  rules  of  syntax.  Again  when  a  verb  is  classed 
grammatically  as  *  intransitive,'  though  it  obviously 
6  passes  on,'  as  in  *  utor  baculo,'  the  explanation  is  to 
be  found  in  the  primary  meaning  of  the  words  which 
comparison  enables  us  to  recover.  Thus  utor  was 
originally  a  reflexive  verb  (Ch.  V.,  25) :  baculo  repre- 
sents the  instrumental  case  :  the  whole  phrase  meant 
*I  employ  myself  with  a  stick:'  just  as  vescor  carne 
meant  '  I  feed  myself  with  food/  Clearly  the  accusa- 
tive had  no  place  here  at  all  when  the  verb  was  used 
in  the  original  sense :  that  original  meaning  was 
superseded  by  a  new  one,  yet  enough  of  it  was  left  to 
retain  the  old  construction ;  and  for  this  reason  or 
from  the  influence  of  habit  the  verb  was  used  in  no 
other. 

8.  Very  frequently,,  however,  a  verb  gets  slightly 
different  meanings  in  course  of  time,  and  accordingly 
can  be  used  in  different  constructions.     Thus  you  say 
'  I  ride,'  and  feel  in  certain  cases  no  imperfection  in 
the  expression  :  it  represents  a  condition,  '  for  me,  I 
ride/  in  Robert  Browning's  poem.     But  you  say  also 
'  I  ride  a  horse  ;'  and  are. equally  well  satisfied  there- 
with :  whether  ' horse  '  is  an  'accusative  of  reference,' 
or  whether  '  ride '  has  got  some  fuller  meaning  and  is 
now  equivalent  to   'sit  upon,'  you  do  not  consider. 
Every  Greek  and  Latin  scholar  will  recall  at  once  the 
different    'constructions7    of    the    same   verb,    which 
mostly  arise  from  a  gradual  change  or  amplification  of 
meaning. 

9.  The  different  uses  of  the   accusative  as  given 
by  grammarians  may  show  us  how  much  more  is 
often  put  into  a  grammatical  form  than  is 
really  there.     Thus  we  are  told  of  the  accusative 


I3o  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

of  motion  towards  a  place,  the  accusative  of  duration 
in  time,  the  accusative  of  the  compass  of  the  action, 
&c.  Now  in  one  sense  this  is  quite  right  :  these 
phrases  represent  truly  enough  the  sense  conveyed 
by  an  accusative  with  different  contexts ;  they 
classify  these  uses,  distinguish  them,  and  enable  us  to 
recognise  similar  ones — all  of  which  is  absolutely 
necessary  in  learning  a  particular  language.  But  the 
student  of  language,  in  and  for  itself,  must  declare 
that  none  of  these  senses  belong  to  the  accu- 
sative. They  are  infused  into  the  whole 
sentence — not  the  accusative  merely — by  the  in- 
telligence of  the  hearer.  The  accusative  form 
indicates  nothing  except  that  a  verb  goes  before  it ; 
indeed,  it  does  not  prove  so  much  as  that,  because  we 
have  to  distinguish  the  nominatives  which  have  the 
same  form.  But  we  have  already  seen  (Ch.  VI..  5)  that 
if  the  accusative  of  the  name  of  a  place  is  added  after 
a  verb  which  denotes  going,  it  is  easy  for  the  hearer 
to  understand  that  motion  to  that  place  is  expressed 
by  the  whole  sentence,  though  the  same  may  be 
expressed  more  clearly  by  using  a  preposition  :  '  eo 
Romam '  or/  eo  ad  Romam.'  But  what  I  wish  you  to 
see  is  that  there  is  nothing  in  '  Romam'  itself "to  signify 
*  motion  toward '  Rome,  though  it  may  be  convenient 
to  have  a  rule  in  grammar  that  *  motion  to  a  place  can 
be  expressed  by  an  accusative.'  So  the  intention  or 
'  compass '  of  the  act  of  going  is  denoted  by  the  whole 
sentence  *  spectatum  veniunt '  =  '  they  come  a-seeing.1 
If  you  say  *  I  went  two  miles,'  it  is  the  general  sense 
which  gives  the  *  extension  in  space '  attributed  to  the 
case ;  in  the  sentence  '  he  lived  two  years '  the  same 
explanation  is  true  of  the  '  duration  of  time.'  If  you 
say  '  he  lived  two  miles,'  you  get  no  sense  at  all ; 
there  is  no  4  extension  in  space '  in  the  accusative 
except  with  a  suitable  context. 

10.  Of  course  all  these  expressions  could  be  made 
more  accurate  by  using  a  preposition  :  *  I  went  over 


VIL]  THE  BEGINNING  OF  SYNTAX.  131 

two  miles/  *  he  lived  during  two  years/  We  might  be 
disposed  to  think  that  they  are  mere  inaccuracies,  the 
preposition  having  been  carelessly  dropped.  But  I  do 
not  think  that  is  so.  They  are  found  in  all  languages, 
up  to  the  oldest ;  and  they  seem  to  me  rather  rem- 
nants of  the  older  stage  of  language  when  the  means 
of  distinction  were  fewer,  and  so  the  accusative — one  of 
the  oldest  cases — did  the  work  of  others  not  yet  firmly 
established.  Then  they  survived  just  because  no  more 
was  actually  needed  to  express  the  meaning.  Lan- 
guage, as  I  have  already  pointed  out,  is  only  bound  by 
the  need  of  intelligibility ;  it  may  have  just  so 
much  vagueness  as  is  consistent  with  being 
understood. 

ii.  Often  this  vagueness  of  expression  maybe  more 
expressive  than  greater  clearness ;  it  may  widen  and 
increase  the  impressiveness  of  the  idea  by  leaving 
more  to  the  imagination,  somewhat  in  the  same  way 
as  vagueness  of  description  does  (it  has  been  noted) 
in  Milton  : — 

"  What  seemed  his  head. 
The  likeness  of  a  kingly  crown  had  on." 

Just  so  it  has  been  well  pointed  out,  when  Euripides 
wrote  (HippolytuS)  1339) — 

"  Tous  gar  eusebeis  theoi 
Thneskontas  ou  chairousin," 

('  The  righteous  dying,  the  gods  take  no  pleasure ') 
he  gave  greater  force  than  if  he  had  used  (as  he 
naturally  would  have  done)  the  dative  with  a  prepo- 
sition instead  of  the  accusative.  It  is  not  merely  the 
feeling  of  the  gods  which  is  expressed  ;  rather  the 
death  of  the  righteous  is  held  up  as  a  universal  object 
to  the  whole  world,  not  merely  to  the  gods.  If  we 
translate  *  at  the  death  of  the  righteous/  we  give  just 
that  logical  connection  which  Euripides  avoided.  The 
effect  is  given  more  nearly  by  a  loose  connection  : 
*  the  righteous  dieth,  and  the  gods  take  no  pleasure.1 
12 


132  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

At  all  events  the  sense  is  plain  enough,  though  the 
construction  seems  loose,  just  as  when  in  our  own 
language  Mr.  Tennyson  writes  of  the  children  who 

"  Whistle  back  the  parrot's  call,  and  leap  the  rainbows  of  the 
brooks." 

But  we  understand  the  loose  accusative,  and  enjoy  the 
deviation  from  rule. 


CHAPTER   VIII. 

ON   THE   NATURE    OF    LANGUAGE. 

i.  IN  this  very  rough  sketch  of  the  growth  of 
syntax  what  have  we  seen  of  any  correspondence 
between  language  and  thought  ?  The  use  of 
words  is  to  express  thought ;  and  it  certainly  seems  at 
first  sight  natural  to  suppose  that  a  sentence  must  be 
divided  into  words  which  shall  correspond  to  the 
divisions  of  the  thought ;  or  at  least  that  the  essential 
divisions  of  the  sentence  and  the  thought  shall  be  the 
same.  Of  course  it  is  possible  to  have  in  our  mind 
for  a  moment  some  conception  of  a  thing  simply  as 
existent,  and  not  in  any  relation  to  anything  else  ; — 
we  may  have  an  idea  of  man,  health,  &c.,  as  things 
familiar  to  us,  but  not  as  doing  anything  or  being  in 
any  particular  state.  Such  an  idea  may  be  rapidly 
called  up  in  our  mind  by  some  one  speaking  to  us,  or 
in  mere  idle  reverie,  or  in  many  ways  :  the  idea  may 
then  pass  away  without  our  having  really  thought 
about  the  thing  at  all  ;  and,  so  far,  we  want  nothing 
more  than  the  name  of  the  thing,  as  a  sort  of  label  by 
which  to  identify  it  as  it  flies  through  our  mind.  But 
if  we  do  really  think  about  it,  even  in  the  simplest 
way,  it  must  be  in  connection  with  something  else — 
some  object  which  it  is  concerned  with — some  action 
which  it  is  doing — some  state  in  which  it  is.  In 
logical  phrase,  we  need  two  terms  and  a  copula,  i.e. 


VIIL]        ON  THE  NATURE  OF  LANGUAGE.  133 

something  to  join  together  the  two  conceptions  which 
exist  separately  in  our  mind  (see  Primer  of  Logic, 
Art.  n).  Now,  must  there  be  a  distinction  in  lan- 
guage corresponding  to  this  primary  distinction  in 
thought  ? 

2.  Let  us  try  our  own  language  first.  *  Victoria 
is  queen/  '  honey  is  sweet,'  *  to  err  is  human  : '  here 
we  have  sentences  broken  up  each  into  two  terms, 
with  the  verb  serving  merely  to  bring  those  terms  into 
connection.  No  doubt  '  is '  once  meant  more  than 
this  :  first  of  all  it  expressed  breathing,  then  existence, 
as  it  does  now  sometimes,  e.g.  when  we  say  l  God  is  ; ' 
and  indeed  the  sense  will  not  be  changed,  though  the 
form  of  expression  would  be  cumbrous,  if  we  expand 
into  *  Victoria  exists  queen,'  &c.  In  such  sentences 
as  these  grammar  and  thought  do  truly  correspond  : 
the  terms  in  gramniar  may  be  made  up  of  more  words 
than  one,  as  '  (to  err)  is  (common  to  all  men) ' ;  but 
logically  and  grammatically  a  division  is  made  at  the 
same  places.  If,  however,  we  say  '  Victoria  reigns/ 
we  have  not  the  same  correspondence.  The  s  in 
'  reigns '  (no  matter  what  its  origin  was)  is  practically 
the  copula  which  joins  the  ideas  of  Victoria  and 
reigning;  and  this  is  no  longer  separate  from  the 
second  term,  but  has  become  an  integral  part  of  the 
whole  predicate  'reigns.'  If,  again,  we  say  'Victoria 
governs  England/  we  have  the  same  blending  in  the 
predicate  '  governs/  but  we  have  a  distinct  word— 
'  England  ' — to  express  the  object  of  the  governing  ; 
these  two  ideas  are  not  combined  in  our  language. 
In  '  I  reign'  there  is  no  formal  copula :  the  connection 
between  *  I '  and  '  reign/  grammatical  subject  and 
grammatical  predicate,  is  supplied  by  the  mind  of  the 
hearer  or  reader.  In  '  reign  ! '  there  is  no  expressed 
subject,  but  the  tone  of  the  speaker  indicates  the 
meaning,  while  the  reader  gathers  it  from  the  mark 
( ! ),  or,  failing  that,  in  the  best  way  he  can.  Gene- 
rally speaking,  in  analytic  languages  (Ch.  II.,  2), 


134  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

such  as  ours,  subject  and  predicate  and  object 
(where  such  exist)  are  distinct  words  ;  some- 
times the  copula  is  distinct,  sometimes  it  is  blended 
with  the  predicate. 

3.  But  it  is  clearly  not  necessary  (as  we  see 
from  our  own  language)  that  there  should  be  any 
distinction  in  form  to  mark  which  is  subject 
and  which  is  predicate  or  object.  Sometimes 
a  surviving  inflection  makes  that  distinction  with  us, 
but  apart  from  this,  our  language  is  much  on  a  par 
with  Chinese  in  this  respect.  Certainly  we  have  distinct 
words  for  nouns  and  verbs,  which  the  Chinese  have 
not ;  and  these  generally  remain  fixed.  But,  if  you 
will  think,  you  will  recollect  plenty  of  instances  where 
the  absence  of  inflections  has  allowed  a  noun  to  turn 
into  a  verb.  I  have  seen  at  the  end  of  a  telegram  the 
words  'wire  reply/  and  I  had  no  doubt  that  they 
meant  *  send  a  reply  by  telegraph/  that  *  wire '  was  a 
verb  for  the  nonce,  and  *  reply '  the  noun.  I  had 
indeed  the  order  of  the  words  to  help  me,  but  the  order 
is  not  invariably  kept  in  English,  and  if  I  had  gone  by 
the  dictionary  alone,  I  must  have  concluded  that 
'reply'  was  the  verb,  and  'wire'  the  noun,  and  that 
the  answer  was  to  be  just  the  word  'wire'  which  was 
put  first  for  the  sake  of  emphasis.  But  I  recognised 
the  elasticity  of  language,  and  I  felt  that  the  time 
would  probably  come  when  this  particular  idiom  like 
many  other  parvenus  would  cease  to  be  snubbed  in 
polite  society,  and  when  we  should  find  in  our  dic- 
tionaries '  wire,  verb  active,  to  send  a  message  by 
telegraph/  with  perhaps  a  comparison  of  the  verb  '  to 
cable '  '  to  send  a  message  across  the  sea/  and  with 
examples,  let  us  hope,  as  all  good  dictionaries  ought 
to  have,  of  the  use  of  the  word  drawn  from  the  litera- 
ture of  the  future.  The  noun  reply  has,  I  imagine, 
been  spelt  with  a  y  only  because  the  verb  is  so  spelt ; 
cp.  French,  '  repli/  '  replier/  i.e.  '  replicare  '  (refold). 
It  seemed  natural  that  the  form  for  the  noun  and  the 


Viii.]         ON  THE  NATURE  OF  LANGUAGE,  135 

verb  should  be  the  same,  not  different ;  just  so  verbs 
and  nouns  which  differ  as  *  practise '  and  '  practice ' 
tend  constantly  to  be  written  in  the  same  form. 

4.  Now  this  state  of  things  —  identity  of  form 
between  noun  and  verb,  and  consequent  importance 
of  position — is  exactly  what  we  find  in  China.  In 
Chinese  the  same  word,  according  to  its  position  in 
the  sentence,  will  regularly  do  the  work  of  a  noun  or 
of  a  verb — may  mean  good,  or  goodness,  or  being  good  ; 
and  no  copula  is  employed  or  felt  to  be  necessary. 
By  change  of  position  can  be  denoted  the  different 
relations  which  we  denote  by  cases,  or  by  the  further 
help  of  prepositions  ;  for  example  '  house  man '  and 
*  man  house ;  denote  respectively  '  the  man  of  the 
house'  or  '  the  man's  house.  In  this  way  different 
ideas  are  expressed  by  different  arrangement 
of  the  same  radical  words;  first  comes  the  subject, 
then  the  predicate,  then  the  object.  This  is  so  much 
our  own  practice  that  it  seems  quite  natural  to  us. 
Only  arrange  the  words  on  a  recognised  principle,  and 
all  will  be  clear.  But  then,  do  we  always  arrange  our 
words  so?  Do  we  never  put  the  subject  before  the 
predicate,  or  the  predicate  before  the  subject?  We 
do,  not  regularly,  still  not  uncommonly.  Yet  no  con- 
fusion arises,  when  we  vary.  When  Mr.  Tennyson 
writes 

"  Rose  a  nurse  of  ninety  years, 
Set  his  child  upon  her  knee,"  &c. 

we  feel  that  '  rose '  is  a  verb,  not  the  name  of  the 
nurse,  though  there  is  nothing  in  the  word  to  tell 
us  so,  and  though  the  *  natural  order'  is  broken.  It 
would  seem,  then,  that  in  analytic  languages  neither 
distinction  of  form  nor  fixity  of  order  is  necessary 
for  clearness  of  expression.  Common  sense  supplies 
all  that  is  wanting.  Though  our  language  were 
twenty  times  worse  than  it  is  as  an  exponent  of 
thought,  habit  would  make  its  usages  clear. 

5.  In    synthetic    languages    the    result  is 


I36  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

different.  Here  forms  are  commonly  distinct 
enough  ;  noun  is  noun,  and  verb  is  verb ;  and  they 
do  not  interchange  either  In  form  or  in  use.  In 
*  errare  est  humanum '  you  may  think  that  a  verb  is 
doing  duty  for  a  noun  as  subject  of  the  sentence  ;  but* 
in  the  first  place  '  errare '  is  not  really  a  verb,  and  in 
the  second  it  is  equivalent  to  *  inclination  towards 
error  ; '  which  is  only  an  enlarged  subject.  But  the 
great  divisions  of  thought— subject,  predi- 
cate, object — are  not  kept  necessarily  distinct 
in  these  languages.  It  is  true  that  there  is  no  confu- 
sion in  the  example  above  given  ;  no  more  than  there 
is  in  such  a  phrase  as  *  quantum  errat,  incertum  est;1 
wherein  the  two  first  words  may  be  called  a  substan- 
tival clause ;  and  they  form  a  distinct  subject  to  the 
sentence.  But  when  I  say  *  erro/  subject  and  predi- 
cate are  combined.  *  Errat '  is  a  complete  statement ; 
though  if  the  subject  '  he/  expressed  by  the  final  /  in 
'  errat,'  is  too  general,  we  may  also  say  *  Caesar  errat' 
for  the  sake  of  greater  clearness.  So  too  I  can  say 
'ego  erro '  for  the  sake  of  greater  emphasis.  Now 
in  this  mixing  up  of  the  two  elements  in  one  word, 
there  is  no  confusion  of  thought.  The  one  word, 
which  made  up  an  entire  proposition  to  a  Roman,  was 
just  as  clear  to  him  as  two  words  are  to  us.  But  you 
may  see  that,  if  language  need  have  no  distinct  ex- 
pression for  a  distinction  so  fundamental  as  subject 
and  predicate,  the  relation  between  thought  and 
language  does  not  amount  to  identity. 

6.  The  Indo  European  languages  generally  keep  the 
object  distinct  from  the  predicate;  in  Sanskrit,  indeed, 
you  can  say  in  one  word  '  I  wish  for  a  son/  and  the 
like  ;  where  it  seems  as  though  object  and  predicate 
were  blended  ;  but  in  reality  such  a  verb  is  but  a 
derivative  from  the  noun  ('son')  with  a  formative 
suffix,  which  does  not  really  mean  to  '  wish  ; '  that 
meaning  has  been  infused  into  it  by  use  and  common 
acceptation.  The  enormous  Sanskrit  compounds 


VIIL]        ON  THE  NATURE  OF  LANGUAGE.  137 

(Ch.  IV.,  19)  are  nothing  but  enormously  developed 
predicates ;  the  subject  is  always  distinct  from  them, 
and  the  copula  commonly  is  understood.  But  some 
synthetic  languages  of  other  families  do  not  main- 
tain any  distinction  in  use.  In  the  incorporating 
languages  of  North  America  (Ch.  II.,  4)  we  may  find 
an  entire  proposition — subject,  predicate,  and  object — 
run  into  a  single  word ;  and  the  component  parts  are 
not  kept  distinct;  for  the  sake  of  ease  the  different 
members  are  shortened,  so  that  the  whole  may  be 
very  far  from  clearly  representing  the  elements  con- 
tained in  it  In  Accadian  (as  we  saw  Ch.  II.,  3)  the 
object  can  be  inserted  between  the  subject  and  the 
verb;  the  result  is  but  one  word,  but  the  different 
parts  of  the  compound  are  quite  perceptible.  The  con- 
fused American  compounds  are  found  in  a  later  stage 
of  the  same  process :  they  show  the  besetting  danger 
of  the  synthetic  method,  a  want  of  clearness  much 
greater  than  can  be  found  in  any  analytical  language. 

7.  As  a  rule  the  more  a  sentence  is  broken 
up  the  clearer  will  its  meaning  be.  But  clear- 
ness is  not  capable  of  exact  measurement.  In  our 
own  analytical  language  sufficient  clearness  may  be  had 
when  the  sentence  consists  of  but  a  single  word.  If 
I  call  out  l  here  ! '  the  person  to  whom  I  speak  under- 
stands that  I  want  him  to  come  to  me,  though  I  have 
used  neither  a  substantive  nor  a  verb ;  the  meaning 
however  is  implicitly  conveyed,  the  single  word  is  an 
unexpanded  command.  Just  so  with  those  little 
sounds  which  we  call  interjections.  If  somebody 
tells  me  a  story  and  I  say  '  whew  ! '  the  story-teller 
will  probably  understand  that  I  don't  believe  him. 
An  interjection  is  nothing  but  an  undeveloped  sentence 
(Ch.  VI.,  10).  It  conveys  the  thought  with  the  maxi- 
mum of  brevity  and  the  minimum  of  clearness.  But  the 
most  fully  developed  sentence  may  be  misunderstood 
also ;  though  of  course  it  is  less  likely.  The  clearest 
speaker  of  the  clearest  language  will  not  always  express 


138  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY,  [CHAP. 

his  meaning  beyond  any  possibility  of  mistake. 
Generally  the  most  analytic  languages  will  be 
the  most  clear,  and  the  most  synthetic  the 
least  clear.  But  no  language,  that  we  have  ex- 
amined, has  succeeded  in  finding  an  expres- 
sion for  thought  which  is  perfectly  exact  in 
form. 

8.  Speech  then  is  an  instrument  of 
thought,  and  not  a  perfect  one.  This  con- 
clusion is  important  because  speech  has  sometimes 
been  identified  with  thought ;  and  it  has  been  held 
that  the  laws  of  speech — the  principles  which  govern 
the  production  and  development  of  languages —are 
the  same  as  the  laws  of  thought — logic.  Hence  have 
arisen  many  false  conceptions  of  grammar.  Gram- 
marians have  begun  by  laying  down  the  modes  in 
which  men  must  think,  and  then  proceeded  to  find  in 
speech  the  necessary  exponents  of  these  modes.  Thus, 
for  example,  it  has  been  maintained  that  the  instru- 
mental case  was  invented  to  express  the  conception 
of  a  cause,  already  present  in  the  mind  ;  the  dative  to 
denote  operation  ;  and  so  on.  This  is  a  great  error. 
It  may  be  conceded  that  some  of  the  essentials  of 
thought,  subject  and  predicate  as  we  have  already 
seen,  must  find  their  exponents,  whether  separate  or 
compounded  together,  in  every  sentence.  But  be- 
yond this,  logic  should  be  kept  out  of 
grammar.  Grammar  has  its  '  categories,'  its  forms 
to  express  the  '  whence '  and  the  '  where/  &c.  ;  hut 
these  do  not  coincide  with  the  logical  categories, 
and  they  must  be  discovered  in  a  way  independent 
of  these,  from  the  language  itself.  Every  language 
has  its  guiding  principles ;  and  we  can  often  give 
the  reason  why  it  has  taken  this  or  that  particular 
form ;  when  we  cannot,  we  believe  that  there  is 
some  cause,  though  we  in  our  ignorance  cannot  say 
what  it  is,  as  we  saw  when  we  were  considering  the 
origin  of  the  cases.  We  could  recover  their  earliest 


viu.]        ON  THE  NATURE  OF  LANGUAGE.  139 

form  and  their  earliest  use,  but  the  cause,  why  that 
particular  form  was  chosen  for  tbrat  particular  use, 
was  beyond  our  grasp.  But  that  cause  is  never  a 
compulsory  one  ;  there  is  no  must  in  the  matter.  We 
saw  reason  to  believe  that  many  different  forms  would 
do  equally  well  for  the  same  use.  Then  out  of  many 
possible  forms  of  expression  some  one  secures  accep- 
tance by  its  greater  suitability,  real  or  apparent.  The 
fittest  form  makes  its  way  into  general  use. 

9.  You  may  understand  this  point,  that  speech  is 
only  an  instrument  of  thought,  not  thought  itself,  from 
another  consideration.     Speech  is  only  one  way 
in  which  thought  can  be  expressed  ;  there  are 
others  as  well,  none  indeed  capable  of  the  fine  dis- 
tinctions which  speech  conveys,  but  yet  sufficient  as  a 
means  of  communication. 

10.  First  there  is  the  language  of  gesture.     If 
you  ask  for  something,  and  the  man  whom  you  ask 
shakes  his  head,  that  is  quite  as  intelligible,  as  any 
*  no  ! '     So  you  may  beckon  by  the  finger  instead  of 
calling  with   the  voice ;  you  may  refuse  politely  by 
shrugging  your  shoulders  ;  you  may  show  approval  by 
a  pat ;  a  kiss  is  the  current  expression  of  affection. 
Think  for  a  minute  how  much  a  Frenchman  says  by 
the  motions  of  his  body ;  they  are  often  much  more 
intelligible  to  us  than  his  words.     Indeed  words  seem 
to  be  only  employed  to  eke  out  his  meaning;  and 
though  we  staid  Englishmen  are   apt  to   think  him 
ridiculous,  he  is  using  a  wealth  of  expression  of  which 
we  rarely  avail  ourselves.   One  reason  why  Englishmen 
are  commonly  ineffective  speakers  in  public,  is  their 
neglect   of   action    in    speaking.      Because   bad   and 
unsuitable  action  in  the  delivery  of  a  speech  offends 
us,  we  commit  the  error  or  thinking  that  all  action  is 
bad.     Depend  upon  it,  we  should  not  have  thought 
so,  if  we  could  have  seen   Demosthenes  or  Cicero. 
In   the   more    effusive    temperaments   of    the    south, 
action  and  words  seem  to  harmonise  by  an  unerring 


I4o  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

instinct.  If  we  can  once  convince  ourselves  of  this 
great  fact,  how  much  action  can  do,  we  shall  find  it  is 
quite  possible  to  imagine  how  the  earliest  inhabitants 
of  the  earth  might  converse  principally  by  gesture, 
and  only  employ  a  few  sounds  to  make  their  meaning 
clear. 

ii.  But  indeed  we  need  not  resort  to  imagination. 
We  have  among  us  deaf  mutes  conversing  by  no 
other  means,  but  gesture  only.  They  learn  to  com- 
municate by  imitation,  and  we  do  so  as  children  on 
no  other  principle,  the  difference  in  practice  being 
that  we  learn  (i.e.  imitate)  our  parents'  words  :  deaf- 
mutes  imitate  by  signs  the  most  distinctive  property  of 
an  object;  and  it  is  worth  remembering  (what  I  have 
said  before,  see  Ch.  IV.,  16,)  that  our  names  for  things 
do  but  represent  one  property  of  the  thing  so  named. 
Most  of  their  gestures  doubtless  require  repetition 
before  they  can  be  certainly  understood  ;  that  is,  they 
are  conventional:  but  this  convention  is  of  the  simplest 
kind,  arid  needs  no  help  from  language  to  explain  it. 
Some  of  their  signs  are  very  ingenious  *  To  pull  up 
a  pinch  of  flesh  from  the  back  of  one's  hand  is  flesh 
or  meat.  Make  the  steam  curling  up  from  it  with  the 
forefinger,  and  it  becomes  roast  meat.  Make  a  bird's 
bill  with  two  fingers  in  front  of  one's  lips  and  flap 
with  the  arms,  and  that  means  goose;  put  the  first  sign 
and  these  together,  and  we  have  roast  goose?  One  or 
two  dinners  of  roast  goose,  and  one  or  two  repetitions 
of  the  sign,  would  make  these  gesture-words  perfectly 
intelligible.  Observe  that  this  method  of  communi- 
cating requires  no  knowledge  of  the  name  l  goose '  as 
used  in  England.  It  is  quite  different  from  the  way 
in  which  people  who  are  born  deaf  only  (and  not 
mute)  may  be  taught  by  the  eye  to  attach  certain 
meanings  to  written  symbols  ;  and  even  those  who 
are  blind  as  well  as  deaf,  may,  by  long  labour,  be 
trained  to  learn  that  raised  letters  are  the  conventional 
representation  of  the  actual  things  which  they  know 


viii.]        ON  THE  NATURE  OF  LANGUAGE,  141 

by  touch.  These  people  merely  learn,  with  much 
greater  difficulty,  the  language  which  we  speak.  But 
the  language  of  deaf-mutes  is  gesture  and  nothing 
else ;  though  of  course  they  may  afterwards  learn  to 
read  and  write  our  language  also. 

12.  Secondly,  you  can  communicate  by  writ- 
ing, and  so  express  your  thought.     'Ah,  but/  you 
say,  l  writing  implies  speech,  letters  are  the  symbols 
of  spoken  sounds,  and   have  no  other  value.     The 
letters  CAT  have  no  meaning,  except  in  so  far  as  they 
recall  familiar  sounds,  which  in  their  turn  recall  the 
idea  of  a  certain  animal.      If  they  do  not  denote 
sounds  already  familiar  to  us,  we  do  not  understand 
them.'     That   is  quite    true.     The  letters   which  we 
write  are  nothing  more  to  us.     But  in  the  beginning 
they  were  not  so.     Our  alphabet  came  to  us   from 
Rome,  with  Roman  civilization;  the  ancient  *  runes ' 
or  letters  of  our  Teutonic  forefathers  (Anglo-Saxon 
'  run,'  *  a  secret/  the  knowledge  of  which  constituted 
a  man  a  '  runa '  or  wizard,  and  made  the  German 
prophetess  the  '  Alruna')  may  still  be  seen  in  a  few 
old  inscriptions,  as  on  the  Ruthwell  Cross ;  but  they 
were  soon  conformed  to  the  Latin  type ;  a  few  only 
remained,  p  (called  'wen/  that  is  w)  and  j)  (called 
*  thorn '  =  th\  as  symbols  of  sounds  which  the  Latin 
of  that  day  did  not  possess ;  to  represent  dh  (called 
'edh')  the  simple  d  was  modified  (ft)  :  these   have 
vanished  out  of  our  alphabet,  which  has  returned  to 
the  Latin  form;  we  lose  by  having  but  one  compound 
symbol  th  to  denote  two  simple  sounds. 

13.  To   Rome   the    alphabet   came   from   Cumae, 
memorable  as  the  place  where  it  first  appears  nearly 
in   its   present  form,   now  only  a  waste   site  in   the 
desolate    Campagna.      To   Cumae    it    was    brought 
from  Greece ;    to  Greece,   in   a   still   more  different 
form,  from  Phoenicia  :  and  the  Phoenicians  received 
it  from  Egypt.     Its  history  in  Egypt  is  long,  and  not 
always  perfectly  clear  :  but  so  much  is  fairly  certain. 


I42  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

These  characters,  which  the  Phoenicians  took  as  the 
symbols  of  certain  sounds,  did  denote  at  that  time 
those  sounds,  or  nearly  those,  in  Egypt ;  but  they  also 
at  the  same  time  in  Egypt  conventionally  denoted 
things  as  well  as  sounds.  They  can  be  traced  back 
to  their  oldest  forms—  to  hieroglyphics,  copies  drawn 
with  extreme  exactness  of  actual  things.  In  process 
of  time  these  were  drawn  more  rapidly,  and  lost  their 
original  shape,  till  they  became  like  what  we  see 
them  now.  They  were  no  longer  plain  pictures  ;  and 
so  they  came  at  last  to  denote  the  same  sound  in  the 
spoken  language  as  the  name  of  the  thing  which  they 
still  conventionally  represented.  Thus  the  symbol 
which  denoted  a  fish  became  also  the  syllable  an;  and 
was  used  for  both.  By  degrees,  not  merely  syllables, 
but  the  separate  sounds,  vowels,  and  consonants,  got 
their  proper  symbols.  But  the  strange  thing,  as  it 
seems  to  us,  is  this,  that  the  symbols  were  not  used  at 
last  to  express  these  sounds,  and  these  sounds  alone. 
On  the  contrary,  they  retained  always  something  of 
their  original  hieroglyphic  value  ;  thus,  for  example,  an 
arm  with  a  stick,  the  Egyptian  hieroglyph  (or  *  ideo- 
gram' as  it  is  better  called)  for  'force,'  is  added  after  the 
phonetic  characters  by  which  was  expressed  an  action 
done  with  force ;  as  though  these  characters  by  them- 
selves would  not  have  been  enough  to  express  the  idea 
to  the  Egyptian  mind  without  the  original  ideogram 
which  could  alone  have  denoted  it  in  earlier  days. 

14.  This  fact  shows  plainly  how  natural  hieroglyphic 
writing  seemed  to  the  Egyptians,  and  how  little  natural 
phonetic  writing  seemed,  and  may  also  show  us  how 
entirely  independent  of  spoken  language  written  sym- 
bols were  felt  in  their  origin  to  be.  In  the  same  way 
the  Assyrian  cuneiform  character  was  partly  ideographic 
and  partly  phonetic  ;  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  it 
originated  in  ideography,  just  as  the  Egyptian  did,  and 
it  never  became  alphabetic  in  our  sense  of  the  word, 
by  which  every  consonant  and  every  vowel  has  a 


viii.]        ON  THE  NATURE  OF  LANGUAGE.  143 

symbol ;  in  Assyrian  each  symbol  represented  pho- 
netically a  whole  syllable.  The  reason  of  the  peculiar 
wedge-like  shape  is  plain  enough ;  Assyrian  history 
was  graven  on  the  rock  with  a  chisel,  and  the  wedge 
is  the  mark  which  one  or  two  strokes  of  the  chisel 
most  easily  make.  At  an  earlier  date  the  symbols 
were  much  more  complicated,  and  their  ideographic 
meaning  can  be  made  out ;  but  they  are  composed 
entirely  of  straight  lines,  so  that  there  is  nothing  of 
the  beauty  of  form  seen  in  the  Egyptian  hieroglyphics. 
In  China  ideography  and  phonetism  exist  to  the 
present  day,  side  by  side,  and  the  same  symbol 
represents  an  object  pictorially  (though  the  picture 
has  been  greatly  blurred  by  time)  or  a  combination  of 
sounds.  Now  these  three  systems  are  probably  the 
parents  of  all  the  alphabets  of  the  Old  World,  and 
all  were  originally  ideographic.  They  were  developed 
by  their  inventors  to  a  very  different  extent.  But  it  is 
very  remarkable  that  in  no  case  did  they  work  the 
ideographic  element  out  so  as  to  reach  pure  phonetism. 
It  was  reserved  for  the  Japanese  to  borrow  the  Chinese 
symbols,  and  represent  by  them  syllables,  and  nothing 
else ;  for  the  people  of  Susa  to  do  the  same  for  the 
Assyrian,  and  for  the  Phoenicians  to  develop  a  pure 
alphabet  out  of  the  Egyptian  characters.  All  this 
shows  how  fully  ideography  was  regarded  as  a  method 
of  communication  quite  distinct  from  ordinary  speech. 
15.  You  see  then  that  speech  is  not  the  only  way 
of  conveying  our  ideas.  Speech,  ideography,  gesture 
— all  these  and  others — are  different,  and  were  origi- 
nally independent  methods  of  communication  between 
man  and  man.  You  could  get  on  by  gesture,  you 
might  even  have  a  history  without  language,  written 
or  spoken,  by  means  of  ideograms  and  gesture. 
Speech  has  to  a  great  degree  superseded  all 
other  methods  by  reason  of  its  greater  con- 
venience. But  all  alike  are  but  instruments 
of  man  for  the  expression  of  his  thought. 
10*  13 


144  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

16.  What  is  speech?     The  question  should  be 
answered,  though  very  briefly,  in  order  to  show  how 
wonderfully  fine  the  mechanism  is  by  which  the  dif- 
ferent sounds  are  produced,  and  also  that  you  may  the 
better  understand  the  reason  for  some  of  those  changes 
which  I  have  mentioned.     Speech  is  the  expression  of 
thought   by  the   instrumentality   of  a   succession   of 
sounds ;  and  those  sounds  are  produced  by  a  current 
of  air  passing  from  the  top   of  the  windpipe,  and 
modified  in  different  ways  by  the  speech-organs — the 
uvula  (i.e.   the    soft    palate  which  is  movable  at  the 
back  of  the  mouth),  the  tongue,  the  teeth,  and  the  lips. 
This  current  of  air  is  the  material  of  speech. 
But  that  material  is  not  always  the  same.     When  the 
glottis  or  aperture  of  the  windpipe  is  fully  open,  mere 
breath  issues  from  it.     But  when  the  glottis  is  partly 
closed  by  bringing  nearly  together  two  ligaments  called 
the  chordae  vocales,  and  these  ligaments  are  thereby 
stretched,  the  breath  as  it  passes  through  is  changed 
by  the  vibration  of  the  ligaments  and  becomes  voice. 
Then  breath  modified  by  the  speech  organs  produces 
what  are  called  '  hard '  or  i  surd '  or  '  breathed '  sounds 
— £,  /,  /,  /,  £c.  ;  voice  modified  in  the  same  way  pro- 
duces '  soft '  or  '  sonant '  or  '  voiced '  sounds — g,  d,  b, 
v,  &c.,  and  all  vowels.     You  may  test  the  difference 
between    breath    and    voice   in    this   way.      Try   to 
make  the  sound  /  without  opening  the  lips ;  you  will 
find    it   impossible ;   there  is  nothing   but   mere    un- 
vocalized  breath  in  the  mouth,  and  no  sound  can  be 
made  till  the  lips  open,  when  the  /  is  heard  at  once. 
But  if  you  try  in  the  same  way  to  sound  b — for  which 
sound  the  mouth  is  just  in  the  same  position  as  for  p 
— you  will  be  able  to  make  a  sort  of  sound  before 
opening  the  lips,  because  there  is  voice  in  the  mouth ; 
though    the   sound   will   be   imperfect,    because   the 
essence  of  a  b  is  that  it  is  produced  by  the  lips  when 
they  open,  and  vocalised  breath  escapes. 

17.  The   material   of   speech,    then,   is   breath   or 


viii.]        ON  THE  NATURE  OF  LANGUAGE.  145 

voice.  If  the  mouth  be  kept  in  an  open  position 
and  breath  is  emitted,  nothing  is  heard.  If  with  the 
rnouth  in  an  open  position  voice  is  emitted,  some 
vowel  sound  is  heard ;  what  the  vowel  is,  depends 
upon  the  position  of  the  tongue  and  lips.  If  the 
breath  is  checked  in  the  mouth,  a  hard  consonant 
is  heard ;  if  voice  is  checked,  a  soft  consonant  is 
heard.  If  the  breath  or  voice  is  completely  checked 
by  closing  the  passage  altogether  with  the  tongue  or 
lips,  a  momentary  (also  called  a  '  mute ;  or  an 
1  explosive ')  consonant  (/fc,  g,  t,  d,  /,  b)  is  heard  at  the 
moment  when  the  passage  is  re-opened,  and  no 
longer;  hence  the  name;  if  the  check  is  not  complete, 
if  the  organs  only  approximate  so  much  that  the 
breath  cannot  escape  without  friction,  a  '  fricative ' 
consonant  is  heard  (h,  ng,  y,  s,  z,  sh,  zh>  r,  /.  «,  //?,  dh, 
wh,  w,f,  v,  m) ;  and  as  this  sound  (unlike  a  momentary 
consonant)  can  be  prolonged  for  some  time,  it  is  called 
also  a  continuous  consonant.  An  important  sub- 
division of  continuous  consonants  is  called  nasal. 
These  sounds  are  produced  by  dropping  the  uvula, 
and  so  diverting  some  of  the  voice  from  the  mouth 
through  the  cavity  behind  the  mouth  (called  the 
pharynx,  see  the  diagram  for  m  below)  and  so  out 
through  the  nostrils. 

1 8.  Consonants  are  further  divided  (cross- wise) 
according  to  the  part  of  the  mouth  where  the  check 
is  made ;  if  it  is  made  at  the  back  of  the  palate  by 
raising  the  back  of  the  tongue  towards  the  palate, 
we  get  a  guttural  consonant — the  hard  momentary 
consonant  £,  the  soft  momentary  g  (in  '  get ') ; 
the  nasal  ng  (in  *  sing ') ;  and  the  continuous  sound 
heard  in  the  German  *na^,'  which  we  eschew  in 
England.  It  is  probable  that  h  is  a  continuous 
sound  produced  even  further  back  than  this  ch;  but 
the  nature  of  this  sound  is  doubtful.  For  all  these 
sounds  the  point  at  which  the  tongue  is  raised  to 
the  palate  is  the  same.  You  may  trace  the  formation 


146  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

of  the  other  sounds  from  the  back  of  the  mouth  to 
the  front.  By  raising  the  centre  of  the  tongue  to 
the  centre  of  the  palate  and  emitting  voice,  you  get 
the  sound  y.  By  raising  the  centre  and  point  of  the 
tongue  to  the  centre  and  front  of  the  palate,  you  get 
the  palatals  s  (breath,  as  in  *  .real J)  and  z  (voice,  as 
in  '  zeal '),  both  continuous  sounds ;  if  rather  less  of 
the  tongue  (centre  and  point)  is  raised,  so  as  to  cover 
less  of  the  palate,  you  get  sh  and  zh  (the  sound  Of 
French  /  and  heard  in  our  word  '  pleasure ').  By 
raising  the  point  of  the  tongue  to  the  front  of  the 
palate  immediately  behind  the  teeth  but  not  touching 
them,  you  get  the  so-called  dentals — the  momentary, 
/  (hard),  d  (soft) ;  and  continuous,  n  (nasal),  r  and  /, 
both  soft  fricatives,  but  produced  in  different  ways — r^ 
by  letting  the  breath  escape  over  the  centre  and  tip 
of  the  tongue,  for  which  reason  the  sound  is  called  a 
'  central '  one ;  /,  by  letting  it  pass  by  the  sides  of  the 
tongue  (' lateral').  By  raising  the  tip  of  the  tongue 
against  the  upper  teeth,  you  get  the  two  continuous 
sounds  which  we  denote  by  ///  in  '  thm '  (hard),  and 
*  Men '  (soft).  By  letting  the  breath,  or  voice,  escape 
laterally  when  the  upper  teeth  are  pressing  on  the 
lower  lip,  you  get  the  labio-dental  /or  v :  here  the 
tongue  has  holiday.  Lastly,  by  using  the  lips  only 
you  get  the  labials  ;  p  and  b  the  hard  and  soft 
momentary  sounds  ;  #*  the  nasal ;  wh  (really  hw]  and 
ze/,  continuous  central  sounds,  for  which  the  back  of 
the  tongue  is  raised  ;  and  it  is  also  possible  to  make 
a  purely  labial  /and  v  (laterally)  by  bringing  together 
the  outer  edges  of  the  lips. 

19.  I  have  already  mentioned  the  peculiar  sounds 
called  *  trills  ; '  they  are  hardly  articulate  sounds,  and 
are  produced  by  laying  the  tongue  loosely  against 
different  parts  of  the  palate,  and  then  making  it  vibrate 
by  a  strong  breath.  To  this  class  belong  the  '  North- 
umbrian burr/  and  the  French  and  Scotch  r. 


VIIL]        ON  THE  NATURE  OF  LANGUAGE. 


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PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY. 


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viii.]        ON  THE  NATURE  OF  LANGUAGE.  149 

20.  These  diagrams,  which  represent  the  position  of 
the  mouth  in  the  production  of  some  of  the  consonants 
will,  I  hope,  make  the  description  clearer.     They  are 
taken  from  Mr.  A.  Melville  Bell's  Visible  Speech. 

21.  Fig.  i  gives  the  position  of  the  mouth  for  K,  G 
and  NG  ;  but  in  sounding  this  last  the  breath  passes 
through  the   nostrils,  and  its  course  may  be   repre- 
sented by  a  dotted  line  passing  through  the  pharynx, 
as  in  Fig.  3.    Fig.  2  gives  the  position  for  T,  D  and  N  ; 
for  N,  add  the  line  through  the  pharynx.    Fig.  3  repre- 
sents M  ;  take  away  the  dotted  line  and  the  diagram 
will  represent  P  and  B.     In  these  three  diagrams  the 
closure  at  the  different  parts  of  the  mouth  is  complete. 
In  Fig.  4,  which  represents  v,  the  tongue  is  approxi- 
mated to  the  palate,  the  breath  escaping   centrally 
over  the  top.     Fig.  5  represents  s,  z ;  *  and  Fig.  6, 
p,  (5.     In  the  first  the   breath   escapes  centrally,  in 
the  second  laterally,   as    shown   by  the   two  dotted 
lines.     Fig.  7  represents  R  (the  English  sound) ;  Fig. 
8,  F  and  v,  the  labio-dentals,  not  the  labials. 

22.  Fig.  2  may  be  made  to  represent  L  as  well,  by 
drawing  two  dotted  lines  to  represent  the  breath  issuing 
laterally  past  the  tongue.     Fig.  i  represents  approxi- 
mately the  position  of  the  tongue  for  WH  and  w ;  the 
lips  are  rounded  for  these  (§    24),   but   the  tongue 
is  also  raised  as  for  K  and  G,  though  not  so  far  as  to 
check  the  sound. 

23.  It  will,  I  think,  be  seen  from  these  figures  how 
easy  some  of  the  changes  in  different  languages  are ; 
for  example,  how  simply  Latin  d  may  pass  into  either 
r  or  //  what  small  limits  divide  s  and  th  ;  how  easily 
an    Englishman    wishing  to   avoid   the   German  ch, 
the  position  for  which  is  nearly  that  for  y,  utters  s/t 
instead,  which  is  intermediate  between  s  and  th.  Many 
other  changes  are  seen  to  be  quite  simple  when  you 
know  the  mechanism  of  speech.     You  may  see  how 

*  In  Fig.  5  the  tongue  is  wrongly  represented  as  touching  the 
teeth  :  it  should  touch  the  palate  only,  just  behind  the  teeth. 


150  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

impossible  it  is  for  you  when  you  have  a  bad  cold  to 
say  '  moon ; '  the  voice  cannot  get  through  your 
nostrils,  and  therefore  when  the  lips  are  opened  b 
must  come  instead  of  ///,  and  when  the  tongue  is  taken 
from  the  palate  (as  in  Fig.  2)  d  comes,  not  n. 

24.  In   producing  vowels  no   friction  or   stoppage 
must  occur ;  the  voice  has  free  play,  but  is  modified 
by  the  different  positions   of  the   tongue,  which   is 
raised  up  towards  the  palate,  but  not  so  as  to  touch 
it,  as  it  does  in  making  the  consonants.     Following  its 
motion  from  back  to  front,  we  get  the  following  varia- 
tions— the  sounds  heard  in  'father,'  'p0/r,' '  p01e,' '  p/11/ 
1  peel,'  that  is  the  five  vowels  a,  open  e,  close  e,  open 
i,  and  close  /.    In  making  these  sounds  the  lips  have 
nothing  to  do.     But  there  is  another  row  of  vowels,  for 
which  the  orifice  of  the  lips  is  diminished  or '  rounded/ 
by  closing  the  ends  more  and  more  for  each  successive 
sound ;  for  these  the  tongue  is  also  raised,  but  further 
back  in  the  mouth  than  for  the  first  row ;  these  are 
the  sounds  heard  in  t  P0//1,'  '  pole/  *  pu\\t'  and  '  pool,' 
or  open  o,  close  o,  open  //,  and  close  u.    You  see  how 
deficient  we  are  in  vowel- symbols  ;  each  of  these  nine 
sounds  ought  to  have  a  distinct  symbol  in  a  good 
alphabet ;  and  there  are  a  good  many  intermediate 
sounds  quite  distinguishable  to  a  practised  ear. 

25.  I  think  that  the  position  of  the  mouth  for  the 
vowels   can    be   understood  without  much   difficulty 
by  referring  to  some  of  those  for  continuous  conso- 
nants.    Thus,  for  example,  in  sounding  /   (ee)    the 
mouth  is  almost  exactly  in  the  position  as  for  sound- 
ing jy  (Fig.  4),  only  the  tongue  is  not  raised  so  high 
as  for  y.    There  is  free  room  for  the  voice  to  pass ;  but 
the  difference  is  so  slight  that  you  can  easily  under- 
stand why  /  and  y  pass  so  readily  into  each  other. 
The  position  for  //  (oo)  is  nearly  the  same  as  that  for 
k  and  g  (Fig.  i)  except  that  the  tongue  is  only  brought 
near  to  the  soft  palate  and  does  not  touch  it ;  hence 
the £•  before  the  //  or  w  (see  Ch.  I.,  33).   The  position  of 


VIIL]        ON  THE  NATURE  OF  LANGUAGE.  151 

the  tongue  for  a  (ah)  is  more  constrained  than  for  any 
other  vowel :  the  back  of  the  tongue  is  even  lower 
than  for  u;  hence  the  vowel  is  more  corrupted  than 
any  other.  It  will  also  appear  why  #,  o,  and  u  are 
often  weakened  to  e  and  /,  but  not  vice  versb :  o  and 
u  require  a  double  action,  the  rounding  of  the  lips  as 
well  as  the  raising  of  the  tongue ;  whereas  e  and  /  are 
simple  formations.  It  may  be  noted  that,  when  the 
mouth  is  in  the  position  for  sounding  close  e,  if  the  lips 
are  then  rounded,  the  result  will  be  the  German  o  and 
French  <?//,  a  sound  unknown  in  England ;  also  if  the 
lips  are  rounded  when  the  mouth  is  in  the  position 
for  /,  German  u  (French  //)  will  be  heard.  This  may 
serve  as  a  practical  direction  to  learners  of  these  (to 
us)  difficult  sounds. 

26.  Speech,  then,  is  the  final  and  by  far  the  most 
perfect  instrument  which  man  has  for  communication 
with  his  fellows.  It  is  an  acquirement  of  which  he 
may  well  be  proud.  Indeed  it  is  a  common  saying 
that  speech  distinguishes  man  from  brutes. 
Yet  articulated  sound  is  within  the  reach  of  some 
animals.  We  allow  that  parrots  can  talk ;  but  we  say 
that  they  do  not  talk  in  order  to  convey  any  idea,  but 
simply  from  love  of  imitation.  I  have  heard  of  a 
parrot,  which  had  learnt  to  say,  *  Mr.  A.  is  coming/ 
when  he  was  seen  on  the  road  ;  but  '  Mr.  A.  is  come  ' 
when  he  entered  the  room.  But  it  would  be  a  mistake 
to  suppose  that  the  bird  knew  that  it  was  conjugating 
a  verb.  If  we  allow  that  animals  do  possess  all 
which  can  be  claimed  for  man  as  his  original  posses- 
sion— the  capacity  of  producing  modified  sound — 
the  power  is  still  undeveloped.  It  is  not  by  speech 
that  animals  communicate  with  each  other.  But  they 
certainly  do  communicate,  each  animal  in  its  own 
class,  in  some  way  as  much  unknown  to  us  as  our 
speech  is  to  them.  If  then  we  remember  that  speech 
is  essentially  a  means  of  communication,  we  shall 
conclude  that  the  possession  of  speech  by  man,  and 


152  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

the  want  of  it  in  the  brute,  does  not  prove  that  there 
is  an  insuperable  barrier  between  the  two;  though 
that  may  be  provable  otherwise. 

27.  Reason  and  speech  have  seemed   so  insepar- 
able to  some  that  it  has  been  maintained  that  man 
would  not  be  man  without  speech.     Hence  Shelley's 
well  known  lines  : — 

"He  gave  man  speech,  and  speech  created  thought, 
Which  is  the  measure  of  the  universe." 

This  inquiry,  whether  speech  preceded 
thought,  or  thought  speech,  is  difficult,  and 
it  is  not  hard  to  bring  forward  plausible  arguments 
on  either  side.  The  truth  seems  to  be  this.  Speech 
creates  thought  in  this  sense  ;  it  is  impossible  for  us 
to  think  except  in  some  proposition,  and  a  proposition 
presupposes  connected  words ;  a  single  name  calls  up 
but  a  vague  conception  in  the  mind  which  we  do  not 
clearly  grasp  ourselves  and  which  we  are  quite  unable 
to  communicate  to  others.  But  though  all  this  is  certain, 
yet  it  does  not  follow  that  man  first  got  words  in 
order  to  think;  he  might  get  words  for  a  different 
purpose  and  use  them  for  this  end  afterwards  ;  and 
this  is  probably  the  true  account  of  the  matter.  The 
first  object  of  speech  was  most  likely  the  exchange  of 
such  rudimentary  ideas  as  may  be  supposed  to  have 
existed  in  primitive  man — ideas  not  reaching  beyond 
food,  shelter,  and  the  getting  of  these.  Such  concep- 
tions are  far  enough  from  deserving  the  name  of  the 
thought  which  measures  the  universe ;  but  out  of 
these  thought  may  have  been  developed  by  the  help 
of  speech.  But  rudimentary  thought  preceded  the 
most  rudimentary  speech. 

28.  This  brings  us  to  the  long-disputed  question, 
which  always  allures  and  always  baffles  our  search. 
What  was  the  origin  of  language  ?      It  will 
perhaps  be  said  that  man  received  it  from  his  Maker. 
But  the  answer  to  this  is  plain  and  simple  :  we  have  no 


VIIL]        ON  THE  NATURE  OF  LANGUAGE.  153 

warrant  for  supposing  that  man  did  so  receive  it ;  and 
so  far  as  we  can  see,  it  is  not  in  accordance  with  the 
principles  of  the  Divine  government  of  the  world, 
that  man  should  be  supernaturally  provided  with  that 
which  he  is  competent  to  produce. 

29.  It  is  of  no  use  to  make  this   inquiry  in  the 
sense  of  trying  to  find  out  some  language  first  spoken 
by  man  upon  the  earth,  before  which  none  existed. 
We  can  point  out  how  particular  languages  may  have 
sprung  up,  because  here  we  are  guided  by  what  we  can 
see  going  on  among  uncivilized  people  at  this  day. 
Men  tell  us  that  in  North  America  an  Indian  language 
does  not  last  more  than  a  generation  ;  the  change 
of.  vocabulary  is  so  rapid  that  a  translation   of  the 
Bible  may  be  totally  unintelligible  to  the  children  of 
those  for  whom  it  was  made.     Change  in  Europe  is 
not  so  rapid  as  this.     But  I   have  brought   forward 
sufficient  examples  from  our  own  language   to   show 
that  change  with  us  is  quite  perceptible ;  and  we  can 
trace  the  formation  of  one  language  out  of  another, 
of  the  French  out  of  the  Latin  for  example  ;  and  so 
we  may  learn  what  the  processes   are  by   which    a 
language  can  grow  up  and  pass   away.     But  in    all 
these  cases  there  is  some  pre-existing  material,  out  of 
which  the  new  language  is   shaped — sounds  already 
articulated.     For  the  inquiry  how  man  began 
to  utter  articulate  sounds  at  all,  we  have  no 
data.     When   science   shall  have  determined   what 
were  the  first  beginnings  of  man  upon  the  earth,  the 
earliest  form  of  all  speech  may  be  known  also.     In 
the  meantime  we  may  speculate  ;  only  let  us  remember 
how  weak  is  the  basis  for  our  results. 

30.  Man   may  at  first  have  made  himself  under- 
stood  by   gesture    only ;    he   may   have   also   made 
rude    representations,    as    with    a    stick    upon    the 
ground ;    he   may   by   degrees   have   learnt   to   help 
out  his  meaning  by  sounds,  which  he  had  all  along 
the  capacity  to  create.     Children  use  their  voice  to 


154  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

make  sounds  long  before  they  connect  any  sort  oi 
meaning  with  them ;  by  degrees  they  learn  to  make 
certain  sounds  at  will,  and  to  attach  them  to  par- 
ticular objects.  But  they  have  some  guide  ;  these 
sounds  are  attached  to  those  things  by  the  persons 
round  about  them.  Had  primitive  man  anything  of 
the  kind  to  help  him  ?  If  savage  A  put  his  hand 
upon  a  bone  that  savage  B  was  gnawing  and  gave  a 
growl  as  a  dog  might  do,  it  is  probable  that  B  would 
understand  that  A  wanted  the  bone  and  meant  to 
take  it.  If  on  the  other  hand  A  uttered  the  cry  of 
pain,  which  is  common  to  man  and  beast,  it  might  be 
that  B  would  perceive  that  A  was  asking  for  the  bone 
as  pathetically  as  he  could.  So  by  degrees  A  and  B 
might  attach  meanings  to  these  sounds  apart  from 
articles  of  food.  All  this  may  be  so ;  and  here  we 
have  enough  to  be  the  beginning  of  a  language,  a 
connection  formed  between  a  sound  and  an  object  or 
a  process. 

31.  We  do  know,  for  here  we  have  facts  to  go 
upon,  that  cries  of  pain,  astonishment,  pleasure,  and 
the  like,  form  a  considerable  part  of  the  languages  of 
savages ;  and  that  out  of  these  a  certain  number  have 
been  retained  in  the  speech  of  civilized  nations,  e.g. 
the  Greek  'alalazo,'  the  Latin  '  ululo,'  &c.  The 
languages  of  civilized  peoples  also  show  us  upon 
analysis,  that  the  terms  for  the  most  abstract  concep- 
tions can  be  traced  back  to  the  simplest.  "  The 
spirit  does  but  mean  the  *  breath.'  "  *  Divinity1  is 
traceable  back  to  a  word  which  was  applied  to  the 
heaven  and  meant  that  which  was  '  bright.'  Again, 
we  know  that  savages  almost  universally  denote  birds 
and  beasts  by  imitating  their  cry :  this  is  so  natural 
that  many  such  names  survive  in  every  language  : 
witness  our  *  cuckoo,'  '  pewit,1  and  the  like  :  and  all 
things  capable  of  producing  sound,  rivers,  trees  moved 
by  the  wind,  all  objects  which  give  a  certain  ring 
when  struck,  would  be  easily  and  intelligibly  denoted 


VIIL]         ON  THE  NATURE  OF  LANGUAGE.  155 

in  this  manner,  when  once  the  idea  of  connecting 
sounds  and  things  had  become  established.  A  great 
difficulty  must  have  arisen  when  names  were  wanted 
for  things  apprehended  only  by  sight  or  touch ;  and  it 
may  have  been  long  before  this  gap  in  speech  was 
bridged  over.  So  far  as  we  can  trace  the  history  of 
names  they  generally,  and  indeed  almost  necessarily, 
describe  some  one  property  of  the  thing  (compare  Ch. 
IV.,  1 6).  Thus,  one  name  for  the  sun  was  the  *  burner/ 
for  the  moon  the  'measurer,'  for  the  stars  the  'scatterers* 
apparently  of  light ;  the  oldest  intoxicating  drink  of 
our  forefathers  had  a  name  which  survived,  perhaps, 
latest  in  England  (in  the  form  '  mead ')  and  meant 
something  '  sweet ; '  the  name  of  wine  shows  that  the 
drink  was  conceived  of  as  that  which  was  made  out  • 
of  that  which  grew  on  the  tree  which  was  '  tied  up ' 
(root  '  vi '  to  bind) ;  here,  and  often,  the  peculiarity 
seems  to  us  quite  accidental,  and  the  name  inappro- 
priate. But  none  the  less  this  fact  may  show  us  on 
what  principle  names  were  likely  to  be  given. 

32.  We  may  suppose  that  the  sound  adopted  by 
some  man  to  express  some  one  single  feeling  caused 
in  him  by  an  external  object,  might  come  to  have 
a  permanent  connection  for  that  man  with  that 
object,  and  might  be  to  him  truly  its  name.  But 
it  is  not  likely  that  other  men  would  have  the 
same  name  for  it,  though  it  might  become  current 
in  a  man's  own  family.  Thus  many  different  names 
would  exist  among  the  same  people  for  the  same 
thing;  till  for  some  reason  or  other,  convenience 
of  sound,  the  play  of  fancy,  real  or  supposed  ana- 
logy, or  something  even  more  inscrutable,  some  one 
name  would  become  current  and  the  others  would 
drop  out  of  use.  While  men  remained  in  a  savage 
stage  no  such  set  of  words  would  be  likely  to  be 
permanent.  Each  family  would  form  enough  new 
terms,  intelligible  to  themselves  alone,  to  produce  an 
entire  change  of  language  in  one  or  two  generations. 
14 


156  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

But  a  slight  advance  in  civilization  would  give  to 
some  part  at  least  of  a  language  a  greater  permanence. 
Certain  combinations  of  sound  would  become  in- 
separably associated  with  certain  ideas  ;  and  when 
some  modification  of  the  idea  took  place  (e.g.  when 
some  new  animal  was  found  which  was  like  some 
animal  already  known),  the  old  sound  would  be  taken 
as  the  basis  of  a  new  combination  to  express  the  new 
idea;  and  this  process  would  be  repeated  till  the 
sound  would  be  the  connecting  link  between  many 
different  ideas,  the  root,  as  we  should  call  it,  of  a 
large  family  of  words. 

33.  In  this  way  then  we  may  conceive  of  the  be- 
ginnings of  speech,  guiding  ourselves  so  far  as  we 
•  are  able  by  the  analogy  of  facts  in  existing  languages. 
According  to  this  view,  speech  is  the  develop- 
ment, through  imitation,  of  a  capacity  of  man 
— the  capacity  of  making  a  noise,  and  it  may  be 
said  that  this  view  is  as  least  as  probable  as  any 
other.  The  facts  mentioned  are  sufficient  to  show  at 
least  that  there  is  no  necessary  connection  be- 
tween the  sound  and  the  thing  signified 
thereby.  In  each  case  there  is  a  reason  for 
the  sound  ;  but  (we  may  almost  say)  any  other  sound 
would  have  done  as  well,  if  it  could  have  been  ac- 
credited for  the  purpose.  This  reason  cannot  always 
be  discovered;  but  we  find  it  so  clearly  in  many  cases 
that  we  believe  it  to  have  existed  in  all.  But  if  you 
try  to  settle  offhand  the  connection  between  the 
meaning  and  the  sound  of  a  word,  you  will  generally 
get  into  trouble.  We  are  often  tempted  to  think  that 
the  applicability  of  a  word  to  its  meaning  is  apparent 
in  the  sound  ;  for  example,  that  groan  naturally  ex- 
presses a  deep  sound,  scream,  a  sharp  one.  But  in 
such  cases  it  is  the  idea  which  carries  its  associations 
into  the  sound  quite  as  often  as  the  sound  expresses 
the  idea.  You  may  hear  people  say  that  the  word 
thunder  conveys  the  very  sound  of  the  roar  in  the 


VIIL]        ON  THE  NATURE  OF  LANGUAGE.  157 

clouds.  But  the  Old  English  form  of  the  word,  as  we 
saw  above,  was  thunor ;  which  takes  off  some  of  the 
solemnity ;  though  if,  as  is  probable,  the  root  was 
start,  there  is  indeed  additional  weight  in  the  sound  ; 
but  the  old  one  is  so  unlike  the  new  that  no  very 
special  appropriateness  seems  to  belong  to  either. 

34.  The  first  thing  to  be  done  with  a  word  is  to 
find  out  its  history;  not  to  speculate  about  its  present 
form,  but  to  trace  it  back  to  its  earliest  shape ;  and 
even  then,  to  remember  that  it  most  likely  had  a  still 
earlier   history  about  which  we    can   know   nothing. 
Only  in  the  case  of  the  names  of  certain  animals,  or 
the  words  expressive  of  the  cries  they  make  (such  as 
mew,  caw,   bleat,   &c.)  can  we    safely  conclude  that 
they  were  made  to  express  particular  sounds  on  the 
principle,  as  it  is  called,  of  '  onomatopoeia ' — literally 
'word-making/  but  now  restricted   to  forms   of  this 
one  kind,  where  there  is  an  obvious  connection  be- 
tween the  sound  and  the  sense. 

35.  We  see  now  that  language  is  the  work  of 
man,  the  product  of  man's  mind  and  vocal 
organs,  as  a  statue  or  a  picture  is  the  product  of  his 
mind  and  hands.       But  language  differs  from  these  in 
some  important  respects.      A  picture  is  the  work  of 
one  man,  of   a  single  will  :    language  needs  the 
assent  of  many  wills.      No   one   word,    strictly 
speaking,  is  the  work  of  a  single  will.      I  can  make  a 
certain  sound  at  pleasure,  and  apply  it  to  a  certain  use  ; 
I  can  say  .'  bo  ;  instead  of  'man,'  if  I  please.     But  I 
have  made  no  word  ;  no  one  will  understand  me ;  and 
I  should  not  expect  the  world  to  adopt  my  new  term. 
A  scientific  man  may  invent  a  new  name ;  but  this 
must  gain  acceptance  before  it  means  anything  except 
to  him,  and  how  many  scientific  terms  die   in  their 
infancy  !     Those  which  endure  are  commonly  names 
of  new  things,  which  are  therefore  needed  by  others 
as  well  as  their  inventor  :  and  those  have  much  the 
best  chance  of  life  which  are  descriptive  in  character, 


158  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

such  as  photograph,  telegraph.  Arbitrary  terms,  even 
when  appropriate,  such  as  daguerreotype,  are  generally 
less  permanent.  No  one  man  of  his  own  will 
can  add  one  word  to  a  language  or  take  one 
away.  But  one  man  can  paint  a  picture,  and  it 
remains. 

36.  Again,  a  language  differs  from  a  picture  in  this 
way: — it  exists  for  an  end,  it  is  an  instrument  as  we 
have  seen,  by  which  a  man  makes  himself  understood. 
But  a  picture  is  an  end  in  itself;  a  permanent  product. 
The  man  in  making  it  is  not  thinking  of  anything  else 
for  the  time  :  it  is  to  him  the  one  important  thing. 
But  language  is  not  important  for  itself :  so  long  as  the 
end,  the  being  understood,  is  achieved,  it  is  unim- 
portant what  form  the  language  may  take.     Words 
may  change,  as  we  have  seen  that  they  do,  so  long  as 
the  change  is  not  so  violent  as  to  make  them  unin- 
telligible.    And  we  have  also  seen  that  they  change 
according  to  general  principles  against  which  the  will 
of  any  one  man  is  powerless.     When  '  cabriolet '  was 
so  shockingly  mutilated,  there  were  plenty  of  people 
who  thought  it  vulgar  to  use  the  poor  remnant  of  the 
word  ;  but  who  now  speaks  of  anything  but  a  *  cab  ? ' 
Borrowed  words,  as  we  have  seen,  gradually  come  under 
the  English  law  of  accentuation  ;  against  such  mis- 
calling of  some  particular  word  an  educated  man  will 
often  protest,  and  adhere  to  the  original  pronunciation. 
We  remember  how  the  poet  Rogers  declared  that  it 
made  him  sick  to  hear  the  word  '  balcony '  pronounced 
as  '  bdlcony  '  with  the  accent  on  the  first  syllable  ;  but 
Rogers  has  passed  away,  and  'bdlcony'  survives.    The 
general  tendency  prevails  in  spite  of  all  individual 
exceptions. 

37.  I  have  tried  to  show  you  that  this  tendency 
acts   in    observable   ways,   prevailing   over   a  whole 
language.     Sounds  which  are  disagreeable  to  a  people 
are  changed  or  dropped,  or  provided  against  some- 
how.    It  may  happen  that  the  same   sound  is  not 


viii.]         ON  THE  NATURE  OF  LANGUAGE.  159 

always  changed  in  the  same  language  :  sometimes  it  is 
retained  in  a  particular  group  of  words — arbitrarily,  as 
it  may  appear ;  yet  the  cause  which  keeps  it  there  is 
not  the  will  of  any  one  man  or  even  of  many  men  ; 
rather  it  is  the  general  sense  that  the  sound  is  neces- 
sary for  the  meaning.  At  any  moment,  this  may  cease 
to  be  felt ;  a  few  people  may  drop  the  sound,  others 
may  follow  them  ;  and  after  a  period  of  struggle,  in 
which  one  man  pronounces  one  way  and  one  another, 
the  innocent  cause  of  the  war  either  re-establishes  itself 
or  goes  the  way  of  its  fellows.  Thus  it  is  uncertain 
now  whether '  contemporary '  will  be  finally  pronounced 
with  the  ;/,  or  without  it :  at  present  even  the  same 
person  may  use  both  forms.  In  the  same  way  *  either' 
varies  between  ddhur  and  eedhur  (the  spelling  de- 
notes the  actual  sounds  heard) ;  and  it  is  doubtful 
whether  it  will  go  forward  or  backward  :  it  will  hardly 
get  back  to  the  older  form  aidhur.  The  general 
tendency  in  English  in  all  such  cases  is  toward 
the  sound  ee:  and  the  general  tendency  will  prob- 
ably win  in  the  long  run.  You  may  easily  find  other 
examples  for  yourself.  These  considerations  may 
suffice  to  show  that  language  is  not  an  abiding 
work  on  which  man  consciously  expends 
his  labour :  but  that  it  varies  according  to 
general  principles  over  which  he  has  no 
direct  control. 

38.  This  brings  me  to  the  last  point  on  which  I 
wish  to  speak.  The  recognition  of  these  general 
principles,  which  govern  speech  independently  of  the 
speaker,  has  not  unnaturally  led  some  philologists  to 
the  belief  that  the  science  of  language  should  be 
classed  among  the  physical  sciences,  rather  than 
among  those  which  deal  with  the  works  or  the  ways 
of  man.  In  this  view  languages  have  been  compared 
to  plants,  and  described  as  natural  organisms,  which 
grow  and  die  out  in  accordance  with  fixed  laws,  inde- 
pendent of  the  will  of  man.  I  cannot  enter  fully  here 
11* 


160  PRIMER  OF  PHILOLOGY.  [CHAP. 

into  this  question  :  I  will  only  submit  one  or  two  points 
for  you  to  consider. 

39.  First,  the  analogy  between  language  and  a  plant 
seems  incomplete.   We  may  fairly  enough  speak  of  the 
growth  and  decay  of  language ;  meaning  thereby  the 
constant  development  of  new  forms,  to  meet  the  waste 
caused  by  the  rubbing  down  of  words  in  daily  use  or 
their  falling  out  of  use  altogether.     But  the  growth  is 
not  due  to  any  inherent  vitality  in  languages,  as  it  is  in 
plants  :  it  is  due  to  the  action  of  man  governed  by 
laws  of  association — how  established  we  cannot  tell — 
between  certain  sounds  and  certain  things.     Just  as 
we  believe   that  in  all  history  certain  consequences 
necessarily   follow   certain   antecedents ;  and,  if  we 
could  know  all  the  antecedents  in  any  one  case,  we 
could  predict  the  result  with  certainty;  so  in  language, 
there  are  doubtless  causes  mental  and  spiritual,  which 
determine  the  development  of  speech,  but  these  also 
are  hidden  from  our  eyes.     We  must  not  eliminate 
the  mind  of  man,  as  though  it  were  no  factor  in  the 
production  of  speech,  because  we  cannot  tell  with 
certainty  the  laws  by  which  it  works. 

40.  Secondly,  the  death  of  a  language  cannot  be 
exactly  compared  with  the  death  of  a  plant.     A  plant 
dies  a  natural  death  when  it  is  no  longer  capable  of 
receiving   from   without    those   elements   which   are 
necessary  for  its  growth.     But  that  change  in  speech, 
which  is  so  great  that  one  language  may  be  said  to 
have  died  and  a  new  one  to  be  born,  is  due  indeed 
to  the  progressive  and  never  ceasing  loss  of  old  ele- 
ments, but  also  to  the  addition  of  new  ones  :  as  when 
Latin  became  a  *  dead '  language,  and  the  Romance 
languages   grew  up.     When,   on   the  other   hand,   a 
language  (  dies  out '  because  all  those  who  speak  it 
have  ceased  to  exist,  as  the  Keltic  language  in  Corn- 
wall, it  may  die  in  full  vigour  and  able  to  perform 
every  function.     Such  a  superseding  of  one  language 
by   another    of    an    entirely   different    character,    is 


VIIL]        ON  THE  NATURE  OF  LANGUAGE.  161 

altogether  unlike  the  ordinary  decay  of  a  plant ;  the 
language  here  suffers  a  violent  death.  These  two 
considerations  seem  to  me  to  point  to  this  result  : 
that,  while  language  differs  greatly  from  any 
ordinary  work  of  human  art,  it  also  differs 
from  any  natural  organism ;  and  the  study  of 
language  must  be  classed  neither  as  a  historical  nor 
as  a  physical  science,  but  be  placed  between  the  two. 


APPENDIX. 


(i)  Grimm's  Law  is  the  name  given  to  a  regular 
interchange  of  consonants  between  (i.)  Indo-European, 
with  which  Sanskrit,  Greek,  and  Latin  in  the  main 
agree ;  (ii.)  the  Low  German  languages ;  (iii.)  Old 
High  German ;  but  this  language  in  its  modern  form 
often  agrees  with  the  Low  German. 

The  interchange  is  shown  in  the  following  table, 
where  the  corresponding  sounds  are  placed  horizon- 
tally :— 


Indo-European,  &c. 

Low  German. 

O'd  High  German. 

Aspirate. 

Soft. 

Haid. 

Soft. 

Hard. 

Aspirate. 

Hard. 

Aspirate. 

Soft. 

By  an  aspirate  is  meant  a  momentary  consonant 
followed  by  a  slight  //-sound,  not  so  distinct  as  in 
4  bao£//ouse,'  'anMilV  &c.,  but  of  the  same  nature. 
These  sounds,  however,  are  found  only  in  Sanskrit 
and  Greek;  in  the  other  languages  they  are  repre- 
sented by  the  corresponding  continuous  consonants — 
//,  ch  (German),  thy  z,  f. 

The  following  examples  will  shew  the  changes. 
Greek  and  Latin  forms  are  given  as  being  well  known, 
instead  of  Indo-European.  English  represents  Low 
German  : — 


APP.] 


APPENDIX. 


163 


Greek.           Latin. 

English. 

Old  High  German. 

Aspirates. 

kkzn.            Manser 
Mer             /era 
//jegos        /agus 

^•oose 
afeer 
£eech 

£ans  (modern  £ans) 
/ior  (modern  Mier) 
/uoche  (modern  ^uche) 

1 

£ienos           ^enus 
*/uo              duo 
kannafts 

£in 
/wo 
hem/ 

ch\\nm  (modern  /^ind) 
suei  (zwei) 
han/ 

| 
1 

£ardia          ror(d) 
/ris               /ris 
/ous            /es 

>^eart 
Mree 
yoot 

^erza  (/zerz) 
^/ri  (^/rei) 
/uoz  (/uss) 

Note  that  in  Old  High  German  the  third  change 
(soft  for  aspirate)  took  place  only  irregularly. 

(2)  Some  of  the  more  important  letter- 
changes  in  Greek  and  Latin  from  the  Indo- 
European.  Among  the  vowels  we  often  find  that 

(i)  Indo-European  a  =  Greek  and  Latin  e  or  o; 
as  Indo-European  'p^das'  =  Greek  'p^d^s'  (gen. 
sing.)  =  'p^d^s'  (nom.  plur.)  =  Latin  *p^s'  (nom. 
plur.). 

(ii.)  In  Latin,  u  often  =  Greek  o  ('fen/nt'  = 
phenmti ') ;  also  /  =  Greek  o  ('  ped/s '  =  i  podos '). 

(iii.)  In  Greek  a  is  sometimes  weakened  to  //  thus 
'h/ppos'  =  Indo-European  '^kva;'  'd/domi'  = 
Indo-European  *  d^dami.7 

Among  the  consonants 

(i.)  In  Latin  d  changes  to  //  'Ulysses'  •=:  Greek 
'  Odysseus ; '  rarely  to  ras  'arbiter'  =  'arbiter '  (the 
*  comer-to '). 

(ii.)  In  Greek  s  at  the  beginning  of  a  word  often 


164  APPENDIX.  [APP. 

passes  into  //;  so  '//us'  =  Latin  '.ms;'  between  two 
vowels  it  is  generally  dropped,  as  in  '  mus '  (mouse) 
gen.  '  mu(s)-os.'  In  Latin  s  in  the  same  place  is 
generally  changed  to  r,  as  *'  muj/  '  muris.' 

(iii.)  In  Greek  y  becomes  //,  as  '/m-meis1  =  English 
'j-ou/  or  is  lost  altogether,  thus  'do-syo'  (future  of 
didomi)  becomes  in  Attic  'doso.'  In  Latin  it  is 
written  as  /,  thus  *  nig-um '  =  English  ^'oke.' 

(iv.)  In  Greek  v  becomes  //  ('//esperos'  =  Latin 
*  vesper ')  or  is  dropped  ('  ios '  =  Latin  '  zirus  '  = 
Indo-European  l  z/isas '). 

(v.)  In  Latin  /  =:  Greek  ph  and  ///  (for  exx.  see 
App.  i).  Initial  h  and  sometimes  /  =  Greek  kh 
(  //anser '  =  '  Men') :  </el '  =  '  Mole '  ('gall ').  Medial 
g  =  Greek  /'//  ('anyo'  =  'an^X/o1);  medial  d  — 
Greek  ///  ^cp.  '  ae^-s '  with  Greek  '  ai///6 ') ;  medial  b 
=:  Greek  ph  (*am£6  =  am///6'). 

(vi.)  Indo-European  k  sometimes  changes  to  Greek 
p  or  /,  Latin  qu;  '/C'an/'an'  becomes  Greek  */en/e,' 
Latin  *  qu\\\i]ii^ 

(vii.)  Indo-European  k  sometimes  becomes  g  in 
Greek ;  '  arc^o '  =  Latin  f  arreo  ; '  ky  and  ty  become 
ss;  as  in  ^pras^o^  for  ^pra^-^'6'  (root  *prak,'  formative 
suffix  *  yo '),  *  lij^mai '  =  '  li/^o-mai ; '  gy  and  dy 
become  z  (or  =  dz),  as  in  '  stizo '  for  '  sti^-^o,'  cp. 
Latin  '  stin^/6  ; '  l  ozo '  =  *  o</-_>'6,'  cp.  Latin  '  odor/ 

(viii.)  In  Latin  Indo-European  k  is  written  r,  but 
sounded  as  k. 


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